


The Sixth Mission: Undercover, Overwhelmed

by angel_deux



Series: Won't You Let Us Wander [12]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Fix-It, Minor Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus, Relationship Problems, The Final Mission, Thinking, Undercover, alternate title: neither of them are actually dead, discussion of grief/mourning, that sounds ominous but it's really not, the continued misadventures of Rogue One, thinking the other is dead, this is a fix-it series okay, this series is just finally ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-20 04:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 68,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10654560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_deux/pseuds/angel_deux
Summary: Cassian and Jyn go undercover for a two-part mission with Rogue One while trying to figure out exactly where they stand with each other.





	1. It Isn't Enough

**Author's Note:**

> I distinctly remember promising that this mission would be shorter than the last one, but I'm a horrible liar and right now it's 50k. The good news is that my editing is going a lot quicker than it has been, so I might be able to pull off some Second Mission levels of update speed. We'll see! 
> 
> I know a lot of people don't like cliffhangers, and I've tried my best to avoid them (even when I grumbled internally to myself because the cliffhanger really WAS the best place to end the chapter) but I'm sorry if it ends up happening somewhere. This is gonna be an angsty ride and that's just the way it was written. But please remember: fix it! and I'm promising a truly sickening level of fluff in the final interlude! So have no fear. I didn't write 200k (200k! what the fuck is wrong with me!) just to NOT fix things. 
> 
> As always, thank you all SO MUCH for your comments and kudos and for those of you who bookmark with lil comments, because I love all of you. I was pretty thoroughly rudderless and without motivation (thanks, political hellscape) when I started this series, and writing and receiving all this feedback has helped me through it more than I can say.

Cassian refuses the first mission that Mon Mothma offers to Rogue One. The offer comes in the form of a briefing with she and Draven, and it comes a little more than a month after Rogue One was established as a Rebellion asset, and for most of his life Cassian probably would have felt a pressure to accept the mission on principle, but he _doesn’t_ anymore. It’s easy to say no.

There is a real sense of freedom in that. His team has just spent the past week helping the Kophan Resistance and the loaned Alliance troops take the city of Dawara back from the Empire, edging closer to driving the Imperial forces off Kopha entirely. He’s exhausted, and Jyn is exhausted, and the first phase of the mission would be just the two of them undercover at an Imperial ball on Coruscant. Seemingly low pressure, but there’s really no such thing when you’re that deep in Imperial territory.

Besides, there’s a second component to that initial phase. It makes Mon Mothma look down at the table when she asks, and it makes clear the reason for Draven’s uncomfortable presence in this briefing. And so Cassian says, “no, I can’t,” and it’s that simple.

He thinks Mon Mothma looks equal parts disappointed and relieved to hear him say that.

* * *

In the hallway, after, he learns from Leia that Jyn already said they’d do it.

* * *

It crackles under her skin, being back on Hoth. She prefers the dusty, blood-stained streets of Dawara, the rocky hills around Lisgar, the lavender plains and the beautiful forest near Kirk. She misses Kopha already, misses the sense of accomplishment that comes from wresting something _tangible_ from Imperial rule.

But when Leia pitches the comparatively low-key Rebellion assignment to her, Jyn hardly even hesitates before saying yes.

Jyn says yes because she’s sure that Cassian will want to do it. It’s a _real_ Rebellion mission, the first one on offer since they made the deal. She says yes because, despite the advice that Chirrut has tried to give her, she can’t get rid of her conviction that Cassian will, one day soon, realize that he made a mistake in choosing Rogue One over the Rebellion (in choosing _her_ over the Rebellion. Maybe in choosing her at all).

She isn’t sure what she hopes to accomplish by accepting it, by making sure that he’s as satisfied as he can be. Is she trying to delay what she believes to be inevitable? Or is she trying to push him into the discovery faster? Trying to force him to get it over with, to realize that he’s missed having nothing to hold him back from doing everything he could to help, to realize that he made the wrong choice, to leave her like he was always going to?

“You are new to love,” Chirrut told her yesterday, before she and Cassian were called away to Hoth. “You should have seen Baze when I first met him. Suspicious of my every compliment. My every smile. He thought I was going to leave too, little star. And look at us now.”

His words help, sometimes. Sometimes they settle the fear in her belly and she can feel herself relaxing into something like comfort. She can go _days_ without the fear driving her back into herself. But Chirrut can’t always be there, and he can’t always _reach_ her, and he can’t see the way Cassian looks at her sometimes, blank and yet worried and so difficult to figure out. And so when Leia asks, when she offers a chance, Jyn says yes.

* * *

Cassian is not the sort of man who looks the other way for the sake of his own comfort. He does not try to convince himself that everything is fine when all evidence tells him otherwise. Cassian is the sort of man who looks into the heart of a problem and then does his very best to fix it, or at least limit the damage if the worst comes to pass.

He’s also the sort of man, he is discovering, who is kind of a hypocrite when it comes to that policy, at least in the way in which it relates to love.

He can see it, her fear. He still doesn’t completely understand _what_ she is afraid of, but he sees the tight tension behind her eyes and the way she looks at him when she thinks his attention is elsewhere. He understands that Jyn hasn’t had many people in her life that she could count on, and so he doesn’t fault her for it. He doesn’t let it burn him too badly when she looks at him, sad and soft and hurting, like it’s the last time he’s going to kiss her. He waits for her to understand on her own that he isn’t going anywhere. He waits, and he hopes that she doesn’t run before he’s had time to prove that leaving is the last thing he would ever choose to do.

But it’s harder than he expected to look at the woman he has no doubts about and to see the doubts he wished she didn’t have reflected back at him.

This is especially true for _Cassian_ , who can’t find it in himself to blame her for having them. Who would understand if she had doubts that were far stronger than this. Who would understand if she wanted to pull away entirely.

_I just wonder how happy you could be, like this_ , she had said to him, certain that he would be dissatisfied with the half measures this strange compromise with the Rebellion holds. Cassian wonders if she realizes that the half measures _she_ has imposed on him are far more unsettling than the Rebellion’s could ever be.

* * *

“You said yes to the mission.”

Jyn looks up at him in surprise as he enters, her head bent over the datapad in her lap as she sits cross-legged on the small bunk in their temporary Hoth quarters. She has her elbows propped up on her knees, and she smiles at him unthinkingly, but her eyes contain that reproachful distance that they so often do.

Maybe, he thinks fleetingly, it’s too much. Too fast. Maybe she wants distance from him and he’s just not taking the hint, burrowing himself closer to her in an attempt to keep her from going, driving her further away with every needy, greedy grasp of his hands.

“Of course I said yes,” she says. “Seems simple enough.”

There’s a reason they were told separately. Maybe Draven knew that she would be more likely to accept than he would (provided, of course, that Leia was the one pitching it) but also because Draven and Mon Mothma would both know better than to offer up a mission that included an assassination while Jyn was listening. Cassian scrubs a hand through his hair, even though he’s realized that this is one of his strongest tells, and has been trying not to do it so often.

“You said no,” Jyn says, understanding.

If he were to tell her about the assassination, right now, she would march straight to Leia and refuse the mission. She would order an immediate transfer off of Hoth. She would be _furious_ , and she wouldn’t look back, and she would apologize for taking the mission without asking him what he wanted to do first.

He’s not sure why, but the idea of it makes him nauseas. She would come alive with her anger, with the fire he’s long noticed in her, and it would be for _him._

But how long would it last? A day? Two? Before the shift would come and she would retreat, become guarded again, throwing up shields around herself to keep him out?

He shrugs. Looks away. Resigns himself to more blood on his hands.

“After Leia told me you accepted it, I told her we’d do it. But not at first.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t think you’d want to.”

“Why not?”

Frustration, because he can feel her holding back, hiding behind a blank expression that must be something like his own, the one she hates so much.

“It’s undercover.”

“And? We go look pretty on Coruscant for a night, and then we meet up with Leia and Luke and the rest of Rogue One for a diplomatic meeting on Aeron. Sounds like a nice vacation from Kopha, honestly. Practically a _break_.”

She’s avoiding, deflecting, looking at him with an expression that refuses to concede any ground. It’s a show of her stubbornness that he knows too well. It wouldn’t be easy to get her to admit any amount of hesitation right now. It wouldn’t be easy even if he _wasn’t_ too afraid to push her. He knows she doesn’t want to take this mission. He also knows that she would rather die than admit it.

“All right,” he says, and he keeps his own tone level. His own expression blank.

* * *

Cassian knows what it feels like to be in the middle of an operation that’s going sideways. He knows what it’s like to watch something that started out flawless begin to crumble around him. But it’s never been personal before. He’s never felt this panicked desperation to keep someone where they are, never felt the failure of them slipping away, sliding effortlessly out of his grasp no matter how hard he tries to keep them.

The worst part, he thinks, is that Jyn doesn’t seem to realize he knows anything. She kisses him. Touches him. Fucks him. All with the same passion and fire, but it’s short lived, and he watches her pack herself away again once it’s over, her eyes looking longingly in his direction as if he’s already whole star systems away.

And Cassian loves her as much as he knows how, but it doesn’t seem to be enough.

And Cassian is afraid.

* * *

“Just the two of you?” Bodhi asks, looking between them.

“For the first part,” Jyn confirms. “You’ll head to Aeron in time for the second, and we’ll meet up with you there. You’ll be traveling with Leia and Luke in an Aeronian shuttle, help you fly under Imperial radar. Leia said she could get you some practice time.”

“Aeron is under Imperial rule,” Baze says. “And we’re bringing the princess? It’s going to be a quiet mission, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so,” Jyn says with a grin. Baze grumbles, settling back against his seat.

“My favorite,” he says dryly.

“An undercover mission,” Chirrut says thoughtfully. “Interesting choice for the two of you. And on _Coruscant_.”

Neither of them said anything about Coruscant, and she and Cassian exchange a fond, disbelieving eyeroll. It’s not even a surprise anymore when Chirrut manages to know more than he should, but it still bears acknowledging.

“I’m perfectly suited to undercover work, before you say anything insulting,” Jyn says. “And I have the best possible teacher with me.”

She smiles over at Cassian, and he gives her a small, surprised smile in return.

The thing about Jyn’s sudden change, this protective bubble that has sprung up around her, is that it isn’t a very good one. She doesn’t know that Cassian can see it. She doesn’t think he notices anything at all. Because as far as Jyn is concerned, there’s nothing to see. She’s failing.

_Protect your heart_ , she had told herself when they eased back into the Rebellion. _Keep it safe, because when he wants to go back, and when he realizes you are not enough for him, there won’t be anything you can do. He will choose them, and he will always choose them, and you need to prepare for it._

It’s easy enough to tell herself that. And it worked for so many years: closing people off, holding herself at a distance. But this is so different, so much worse. There is no holding herself separate from Cassian.

_Protect your heart_ , she had insisted, but it was already too late for that by the time she realized it needed protecting. It’s been too late for a while.

Every time she remembers to pull herself back, it feels a little more pointless. _It’s too late_ , she wants to tell herself. _Your heart is already broken. You just haven’t realized it yet._

* * *

They spend the last night before the mission trying on the clothes that Leia has procured for them. A formfitting but not too revealing black dress for Jyn, the skirt reaching the floor, billowing enough to hide thigh holsters and as many knives as she wants to carry. In other words, it’s perfect, and Jyn is thrilled with it. There are no mirrors in their quarters on Rogue One, and she isn’t going out into the main hold to check in one of the refreshers, so she turns to Cassian instead, one eyebrow raised, her pleasure with the dress making her more playful than usual, looking for an opinion. He looks up from buttoning his jacket – the same Imperial gray he had been wearing on Scarif – and one corner of his mouth quirks up, his smile soft and dimpled when she twirls a little.

“Beautiful,” he says, and she rolls her eyes at the breathlessness of his voice. But he doesn’t let her shrug it off the way she wants to. He steps closer to her, his hands sliding across the silken fabric at her waist, sending shivers of delight through her.

_Protect your heart_ , she warns herself, but her heart is busy aching for him.

“You _do_ look good in that uniform,” she says with some regret as she tugs at his collar, leaving her hands flat on his chest when she’s finished straightening it. “Much as it makes me want to shoot you.”

“Mm. Reflexes.”

“Exactly. You understand.”

“I do. Fortunately, I’m not plagued by such conflicts. This dress could be worn by anyone, not just the doting wives of Imperial officers.”

“Doting wife, is it? Not going to make me play the hapless socialite date? You’re too kind.”

“Easier this way,” Cassian insists, lowering his lips to hers. _Protect your heart,_ she thinks, but she slips her fingers into his hair, dragging up from the back of his neck to the base of his skull in the way that always makes him shiver, just a little. Just enough to make her feel a certain strength in their connection, a spark that makes her feel more grounded to him.

“Easier how?” she wonders against his lips. His smile in return, when he pulls back to make eye contact, is almost _bashful_.

“Easier if I don’t have to pretend to only think you are beautiful. The closer you can get to truth, the easier it is. If they catch me looking at you with my heart in my eyes, they won’t think anything of it.”

The problem is this: all thoughts of protecting her heart vanish. Are utterly destroyed. Without even knowing there’s a game to be played, Cassian continues to best her at it.

Who could protect their heart against him? Certainly not Jyn.

“If you’re going to keep talking like that, we should get ourselves out of these disguises before we make a mess of them,” Jyn says, and Cassian laughs, and his throat rumbles with a pleased, pleasured sort of sound when he kisses her again.

* * *

Near sleep, in sleep, immediately after sleep: these are the moments in which there is no barrier between them. Cassian is afraid of how much they have come to mean to him.

He and Jyn are both alike in that they curl together, huddle together, two lost and lonely people who can stop pretending for at least a few hours a night. Jyn is more tactile near sleep than at any other time. She wedges herself into every available gap between them. She has a habit of trailing her fingertips over his skin, which is pleasantly distracting, keeps him warm and awake long after he would have otherwise fallen asleep. Sometimes she speaks in these quiet moments shared, but more often she doesn’t. He doesn’t either, just lets them drift slowly to sleep together. All their problems from the day seem like nothing.

Tonight, her fingertips curl and unfurl against his chest, over his heart. Her head rests in the crook of his shoulder, pushed against his chin, and his arms are tight around her. The bruises on her throat from She’bara have faded, but still he brushes the skin where they used to be, remembering them. Remembering how certain he was that she would die, and yet she’s here. Here, and still somehow so distant. Because when the morning comes, she will go back to being closed off from him. He will see again the part of her that she wants to keep hidden: the part that is increasingly ready to run.

He almost says it tonight. Almost asks her. It would be a betrayal, in a way, to break the unconscious truce she seems to have made with him in the softness of the during and after moments of their love. But it also might be the only time he’s likely to get an answer.

He doesn’t say a word.

A coward, maybe, he thinks. But Cassian has never had very much to lose before. He’s not sure what he’s going to do when he loses this.

He’s not sure when he started thinking of it as _when_ , either.

Sliding more and more to sleep, Cassian pulls her closer. Listens to the sleepy murmur of contentment. Tries to believe that these nights will be enough to sustain them.

* * *

“Little star.”

Chirrut is looking at her with such concern that Jyn looks down at her dress, sure she’ll find it out of place somehow. Fitting incorrectly, or perhaps stained. Chirrut, she has no doubt, would somehow be the one to notice that.

“ _What_?” she snaps.

It’s the dress. It’s making her defensive.

(It could also be the fear).

“You know what,” Chirrut says. His embrace, the weight of his arms around her in a protective hug, is a surprise, but she returns it, never one to deny him affection. He has this habit of making her feel younger than she is. A habit of making her feel like she’s safe in her fathers’ arms again. “Trust him. Trust yourself. That is all I can say to help you.”

“It isn’t enough,” Jyn says. She doesn’t just mean the advice, and the good thing about Chirrut always seeming to know everything is that he will know this, too. It isn’t enough for her to trust and love Cassian. They have different needs. They have different wants. It isn’t enough. She isn’t enough.

“An absurd argument, but I know that you believe it. I wish I could help you see, but you must do that on your own. You must come to trust him on your own.”

“I trust him, Chirrut,” she says, defensive at even the barest suggestion otherwise. “That isn’t the issue.”

“Perhaps a better word is _believe_. You do not believe him.”

_Trust goes both ways_ , she had said to him at the start. And when she told him he was enough, when she told him that she didn’t hate him for what he had done, when she told him that he deserved every happiness, he believed her.

Trust goes both ways, so why is it so hard for her to do the same?

She doesn’t quite work out how to answer Chirrut before she has to leave.

* * *

The entire flight to Coruscant is spent going over their identities. Establishing temporary truths.

“It’s easier to lie when you can tell the truth a lot,” Cassian said, and so their cover story is in many ways similar to their own. Castor Polt and Yara Leed met on an assignment for the Empire. Yara was a civilian living under Imperial rule, and Castor was an officer rising through the ranks. Yara teaches combat lessons to civilians, and she is used to relocating, following Castor to whatever planet he’s stationed on. She kept her name when they married – an oddity for Imperial wives, but one that fits Jyn’s blunt nature, will make excuses for her lack of polish to the kinds of nobility who think such frivolous things matter. Neither have family, don’t have many friends, are an ambitious but utterly lovestruck couple who want to start a family.

“Who would want to start a family in the middle of a war?” Jyn wonders, and Cassian grunts agreement as they wait for their transport to land.

“Plenty of people, apparently. There were children on _Hoth_. Did you see them?”

“Nearly stepped on a half Twi’lek kid on my way to talk to Leia. I thought I was hallucinating.”

Cassian smirks, looks back down at his datapad. Monitoring the state of their signal jammer, probably. Taking public transport is a necessity for this part of the mission, but he doesn’t trust their private compartment not to be free of surveillance.

“I can’t imagine the galaxy will ever be a safe place for raising a family,” he admits. “It certainly wasn’t when my parents had us.”

_Us_. Jyn glances at Cassian, but he doesn’t seem to have noticed what he said. He doesn’t talk about his family. Neither does she. But she never assumed that he had siblings. Never thought that losing everything could include so much more than parents. Losing parents at that age was enough, wasn’t it? Sometimes she forgets that he was every bit as lonely as she was when they found each other. Sometimes she forgets that she isn’t the only one familiar with the defense mechanism of closing yourself off entirely.

“Mm,” she agrees when he looks up to meet her eyes, waiting for a response. “And I thought you were supposed to be the optimistic one.”

“Optimistic? Me?” He laughs, and she lets out a small chuckle.

“Well, all right. Idealism and optimism are very different things.”

“What do you think?” Cassian asks, and his voice is cut with something sharp, a little breathless, like he’s steeled himself up to ask this question and is now forcing it to come out. “Does Yara want children?”

An innocent enough question, if only he didn’t sound so strangled when he asked it.

Jyn smiles at him. Tries to listen to _trust goes both ways_ , tries to listen to Chirrut’s earnest advice. That’s the worst part of all this, that she keeps _trying_. It just won’t sink into her, still feels like more borrowed time that will eventually leave her hollowed out. Still, she swallows hard, and she thinks about it, and she answers for Yara, and she answers for _Jyn_.

“I think she _does_ want children. But she isn’t sure. She’s still so young. And with the galaxy in the state it is right now…”

Cassian smiles at her, relief to hear the honesty in her voice. But he covers it quickly with a small cough, a wry comment.

“Ah, but we aren’t supposed to acknowledge that, remember? Good Imperial drones pretend not to notice the cracks in the foundation.”

“Of course they do, but Yara’s a very headstrong woman. And she cares for her future children. If she is ever going to have them, she wants to give them the kind of childhood she didn’t get to have. That means confronting convention whenever possible.”

A softer smile from Cassian now, and he hums thoughtfully.

“An admirable woman, Yara.”

“And what about Castor?”

“Oh, Castor knows there isn’t time for children. There’s a war to win, after all. And the Empire is always taking him away. It would be irresponsible until he’s been promoted enough for a steady command. But that doesn’t stop him from dreaming about it being possible one day, in their future. A child with Yara’s beautiful green eyes.”

His smile now is sad, is thoughtful, is too _real._ If Jyn wasn’t already packed into this dress, if she wasn’t so _afraid_ , she would curl around him in his seat. She would press her lips to his. She would show her agreement with his hopes for a one day possibility of something so permanent, something that could be _theirs_.

Trust goes both ways.

Is she a fool to doubt that he can really love her as much as she loves him? Is she a fool to fear that his dedication to the Rebellion means that he must necessarily love her with less than his whole heart?

Or does his smile look so sad, so lost, because he knows how unlikely it will be to happen? Does he, too, know that there is nothing for them forward but sadness?

* * *

The Empire is masterful when it comes to denial. Jyn knew that already, because every place she’s been that languishes under their control has their own impressions of the state of the war, has this certainty that the Imperials are powerful, that they are winning, that they have not suffered unthinkable losses. But still it’s surprising to stand with Cassian in this ballroom, ceilings arching to improbable, certainly pointless heights, to hear the polite laughter and gentle, boring conversation of the politicians and the officers and their spouses.

It’s as if the Death Star and its hundreds of thousands of lives had never been lost at all.

It really strikes Jyn, for the first time since she accepted this mission, that they are dealing with an entire room filled with proficient liars. These people aren’t all Orson Krennic, filled with righteous passion for the cause and desire to succeed, the vitriol that Jyn only half remembers from her last memory of her mother. Half of these people are probably opportunistic. Some of them are probably just _afraid_ to stand against something they secretly loathe. Maybe some of them are Bodhi in the making. Galen in the making. Someone poised to leave and do their very best to burn the heart out of the Empire as they go.

The impossible part is identifying who is who. Keeping from falling into the trap yourself. And so you lie to everyone around you for as long as you can bear it.

“Smile, darling,” Cassian says, his breath hot against her ear. “Remember, nothing is wrong in the Empire. Everything is as it should be.”

She gives him a polite little laugh, snagging a glass of something hopefully alcoholic from a passing waiter. Around her, the ornate, absurd fashions of the Coruscant nobles seem overstated, exaggerated, their hair high and their skirts puffed out. But Jyn’s comparative staidness doesn’t stick out too much either. Her black dress is simple and her hair has been braided and curled into a simple loop around the crown of her head by Bodhi (who, thankfully, was talked out of attempting anything more elaborate). Plenty of people around her are wearing Imperial gray and black, form-fitting uniforms or loose-falling robes or dresses. Wartime frugality, Jyn supposes, though they may try to pretend to themselves that it was a choice made for fashion’s sake.

“Where should we start?” she asks, looking over at Cassian, letting herself relax into the arm he keeps on the small of her back as they move through the room. He looks back at her, his own smile soft and easy, and she _hurts_ inside to look at him like this. Not just the inherent wrongness of Cassian in an Imperial uniform, but the observation of how content he can force himself to look when it’s for a job. And, too, the impossibility of seeing that expression at any other time.

“Acquaintances I’ve met as Castor before,” Cassian says. “This way.”

* * *

They share a not-as-awkward-as-expected dance while Cassian tries to get eyes on his acquaintances. Jyn’s steps are hesitant at first, light, but she picks it up easily, and is forced to admit to an incredulously impressed Cassian that she had started practicing with Aja once she knew they would be taking the mission. Cassian is delighted by that, by the fact that she kept it a secret, by the fact that she had even thought to learn. He laughs, his eyes sparkling behind the Imperial façade, and Jyn loves him more fiercely than ever.

It’s almost a relief when he finally spots someone he recognizes.

* * *

Castor Polt’s acquaintances are as dull and imperious as Jyn was expecting, but they aren’t as threatening as she would have feared. She doesn’t feel the itching nervousness in her blood, the certainty that they’ll see through her. The three men laugh often, ribbing Cassian about his new wife, about his formality, about how surprising it is that they find her good natured and humorous.

“Of all the people to wind up with a genuinely wonderful woman,” says one of them with a loud guffaw. “Castor kriffing Polt. An unfair galaxy, indeed.”

“You still take gin, right?” one of them asks, flagging down a waiter, and Jyn nearly chokes on her own drink in her haste to respond.

“Almost every night,” she purrs smoothly, a joke told only for Cassian’s benefit, and she can tell from the twitch of his jaw that he wants to let out the annoyed groan that it deserves, but his eyes are alight with mirth.

Belatedly, she realizes that she’s made Castor Polt sound like a bit of an alcoholic, but the other officers just raise their glasses with grim smiles, toasting their difficult lives, their crumbling Empire, though they refuse to speak the words aloud. Jyn takes a savage pleasure in watching their trembling hands and their tight eyes and the cracking of the veneer they’ve tried to hastily paint over their tired jokes and their too-bright smiles. When she looks over at Cassian, she sees a smile twisted on his mouth that speaks of the same feelings, and she _wants_ him.

Luckily, their mission accommodates that.

* * *

He locks the door to the office behind them as she removes the datacard from one of the several holsters strapped to her thigh and slides it into the terminal, beginning the download. She has a downright horrifying moment where she wishes K-2SO was with them, because he would be able to do this so much quicker, but luckily the thought has been unceremoniously shunted away by the time Cassian reappears by her side, hands grabbing her hips, spinning her to face him.

“Time?” he asks.

“Give or take twenty minutes,” Jyn replies. She knows she doesn’t have to say it – Cassian’s hands on her waist tell her that he’s pretty much on board for anything – but she wants to. “Would probably be better, for the sake of the mission, if we make sure we cover all possible contingencies.”

Plainly knowing where this is going, Cassian nonetheless pretends at innocence. Which is frankly hilarious, at this point. Those feather-light touches on Hoth in the beginning are a galaxy away.

“All possible contingencies,” he says, his voice deadpan. “Of course. What are you thinking?”

“Well, obviously it’s a good idea to make it _look_ as if we snuck in here to fool around. But think of how much more authentic we would appear if you were _actually_ inside me when they burst in here to arrest us.”

He snorts a little, trying to hide it with a ducking of the head, bringing himself enticingly closer. He controls his face quickly, keeping up the charade.

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten about the _gin_ thing, by the way,” he says, though if he wants her to think he disapproves, he gives off mixed signals when he leans in and kisses a line up her neck. She laughs, pushes herself up to sit on the desk, brushing aside some disused datapads and folders. She indicates the terminal next to her with a sideways nod of her head, her grin growing as she pulls him in to stand between her legs.

“This way you can keep an eye on the time,” she says. She knows better than anyone how he appreciates efficiency.

“You think of everything,” he says, already kissing her.

_Protect your heart_ , she reminds herself, because his words are too strong, the tone too much, too unwavering and certain. _You think of everything_ sounds like _I love you_ from his lips, and she can’t stand it. _You think of everything_ means _what would I do without you,_ and she wants so much to leap over this final hurdle to trust him completely. Give in to the impulse to believe that this isn’t temporary, that this _can’t_ be temporary.

But there’s something there, something blocking her way, invisible but implacable, keeping her from taking the final step. And in his eyes, she can see the reflection of her fears. Even as she kisses him deeply, opens her legs and pulls him in, she thinks, _we are both so good at pretending_.


	2. I Don't Want You to be Afraid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: this chapter was the first part of this mission I wrote, back when it was supposed to be an Interlude! I'm actually very happy with the way this part turned out! Hopefully you all agree!

They don’t get caught. They get the information. The datadisk is secured under her dress, her skirt is smoothed over and resettled, and that’s part one of the mission handled. They are both more relaxed when they go back out to the party, just slightly ruffled – Cassian’s collar crooked, Jyn’s hair a little less pristine than before – so anyone who noticed their presence enough to miss them would see and laugh and understand. Jyn pretends at sex-induced absent-mindedness when she forgets the names of the Imperial acquaintances of Castor Polt, and the men all rib her about it, patronizingly enough to make sure she still hates them. Cassian’s hand is on her always, as if a momentary separation would mean discovery.

They don’t stay any longer than they have to to keep up appearances. Yara asks Castor if they can turn in early, and the men all make murmured, appreciative noises when he agrees.

“If nothing else, you’ve done wonders for this alias’s reputation,” Cassian murmurs in her ear as they make their way to the exit. Jyn bares her throat when she looks back over her shoulder at him, giving a polite, open laugh, so like the other women here that she can see the mingling of pride and disgust in Cassian’s expression.

“And you didn’t want to take this mission,” she teases.

She turns away. She doesn’t catch the clouded expression that flickers across Cassian’s face.

* * *

In the lift, on the way up to their suite for the night, fifty floors above the ball, Jyn doesn’t take her hands off him. Her tugging and pulling and gentle touching is desperate, needy, and it stokes his own fires again even though he knows it’s for the benefit of anyone who might be watching at least as much as it’s for her own.

He hates himself for wanting her like this, soft and pliant, so different from Jyn. Part of it, part of the thrill of this, is that he’s so different from Cassian. They are spoiled, indifferent Imperials. They don’t know anything of gnawing hunger or the certainty of death. Castor Polt reaches for his beautiful wife in this lift and thinks of nothing more troubling than the exorbitant amount they paid to stay here for a night. He doesn’t flash back to another lift, anther life, green eyes aching up at him as he bleeds out, as his broken body fades too fast. Doesn’t feel a wish of more time. More time to know her.

Cassian Andor kisses Jyn Erso with a desperate need to tether her to him, to keep her from going, to make her understand that he wants this, needs this, needs _her_. Does Castor Polt ever doubt that Yara loves him? Does he ever see a shutter come down behind her eyes and fear that one day he’ll wake up and she will have left for good? No. Castor Polt doesn’t have such concerns. Castor Polt just wants to fuck her.

Castor Polt will sleep soundly with his wife by his side. Cassian Andor still has more work to do.

They make their way down the hall, giggling and kissing and pretending, and the disguise doesn’t completely slip away when the door to their room closes behind them. They don’t show any signs of slowing, of pulling away, of letting this moment end. Jyn’s heels are kicked off almost instantly, bringing her back down to her usual height, and it’s like one layer of Yara being stripped away. Cassian chases her, glad for the change of angle, more comfortable kissing her this familiar way, and she smiles against his mouth as if it’s more comfortable for her as well. But it’s different, it’s still different, and he thinks that she _wants_ it to be different. She wants this, the thrill and excitement of something new.

Or maybe she just wants this separation from their reality. The way they can look at each other and see not the months that have led them here but the years of false lives.

Or maybe she’s…

She grabs him through his pants, harsh, the way she did earlier in that bureaucrat’s office, and Cassian forgets to analyze, forgets to worry. His head thuds back against the door, and he pulls her along with him for another hungry kiss.

He has more to do. He should prepare. But she kisses him and her fingers work at the buckle of his belt, and he lets her, and he’s not sure who’s kissing who. Not sure if Yara and Castor have continued past this threshold or if he’s allowed to be himself in this moment, allowed to kiss _Jyn_.

“Jyn,” he says, lips pressed against her temple when she breaks the kiss, as she looks down to better see what she’s doing, trying to see past the volume of her skirt with a light, delighted little laugh, unembarrassed by her fumbling. Her skin is hot beneath his lips, and she flashes a smile back up at him to hear her name on them, and she rewards him with another kiss.

And he thinks, _here she is_ , because this is _her_. This isn’t shuttered off, cold, professional. This isn’t wariness and distrust and the befuddling reproach in her eyes that he has pretended not to notice and she has pretended not to feel.

“Come on, Cass” she says, finally getting her fingers down into his pants, deftly finding him, searing into him with another kiss. “Come on.”

* * *

Her dress is utterly ruined – neither of them had much patience for the complicated buttons up the back in the dim light of their quarters, the mechanisms eluding their desire-clumsy hands. He sits against the headboard of their bed and watches as she picks up the shredded fabric, puzzling over it, her body still flushed from exertion, her breath not quite steady.

He’s not sure how he feels about this deviation in their routine, except that he knows he doesn’t like it. _After_ is for curling together, speechless, needing, burying their faces in each other’s shoulders. It’s for her head resting at the base of his throat, his pulse hammering against the side of her face. It’s for his nose against her stomach, her fingers sliding through his hair. It’s for the mutual comfort of their hands on any available place to rest, it’s for foreheads touching, breath slowing.

It’s the time they need together to sustain them, and he doesn’t like that she left the sanctuary of this unspoken agreement, even if it was just to clean up their scattered clothing after returning from the refresher.

He should have known better than to say anything about it, though. They have been so careful around each other, and he should have known.

But maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe it isn’t supposed to be like this.

And so he says, “what’s wrong, Jyn?” and he can hear it in his voice. Can hear the fear that he didn’t mean to let her know about.

She freezes, and she looks up at him slowly, the dress clutched between her fingers like she means to hold it between them like a shield.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she says. But it’s reflexive, it’s too quick, and even if he didn’t already _know_ , even if he hadn’t known for a while now that there’s something the matter, he would know from this alone.

“Jyn…”

“Cassian, don’t,” she says. As if it’s a warning, a reminder that if he probes more, if he keeps asking, she’s going to answer. A reminder that they’ve existed in this middle space comfortably enough.

Maybe it’s the boldness of Castor Polt still failing to wear off completely. Or perhaps this was always bound to happen. Everything between them feels so hard-won, seems so breakable despite his conviction that this is where he’s supposed to be: by her side. Since Scarif, maybe since before Scarif, he hasn’t wanted to be anywhere else. But he can’t exist in this halfway place anymore. It tears him apart, not knowing. Fearing. This tiptoeing dance he does for her, frightened to scare her back into the locked vault she keeps herself in when she remembers. When she forgets to forget. It’s a constant balance of wanting her to know he’ll hold onto her for as long as she’ll let him and not wanting to push her away completely.

“Please, Jyn,” he says. It’s more raw than almost anything he’s ever said to her. He sees her react to it, her fingers spasming on the dress, but she doesn’t look at him. Not until he sighs, ready to placate her again, give up again. Tell her it’s fine. Tell her that he should not have pried.

“I can’t,” she starts, and she clears her throat. He knows that she’s trying not to cry, and that alarms him so much that he nearly gets up, except that she moves before he can, shoving the dress onto a chair across the room and moving back towards the bed. She’s dressed only in her sleep pants and a light tank top: a soft, vulnerable look. Normally he would reach for her, but he keeps his fists curled in his lap, like he knows what’s coming. “I think maybe I...can’t keep going like this,” she says.

And his world, his entire _galaxy_ shatters.

“Oh,” he says. The devastation does not have a waiting period. It does not start as shock and then curl inside him, turning into something else, something that’s burrowed into his heart before he even realizes there’s been an injury. No, it’s immediate.

She looks at him, struggles for words, her eyes flickering over his face as if cataloguing his heartbreak, and it’s the same way she looked at him when she was leaving Yavin for what would turn out to be the last time. When she tried to push him away with hurtful words that were meant to shield them both from a worse fate.

He wonders, vaguely, what she thinks the worse fate is this time.

“I’m…I thought it would be easier. I thought I would be able to… but I can’t. I can’t keep…can’t keep giving myself over the way I have.”

“We don’t have to,” Cassian starts. Stops. He can’t think of anything else to add even though he wants to say so much. Says, quieter, “we don’t have to.”

“I know,” Jyn whispers. She looks down at her legs, curled under her on the bed, and Cassian’s fingernails are digging furrows into the palms of his hands, because reaching for her is a reflex that feels as engrained into him as the firing of a blaster or the flying of a ship, and he can’t do that anymore.

“I’m sorry,” he says, strangled, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

“It’s not your fault. It’s mine.” Jyn’s sigh is heavy and wet, and Cassian bristles.

“I doubt that’s true,” he says. He doesn’t think the utter certainty that it _isn’t_ true, that it’s something he’s done, comes through in his tone, but he should know better than to think that Jyn wouldn’t know it was there. She looks up at him, and she’s the one who reaches for him, hand moving towards his knee, but he twitches away from the touch before she can settle there, holding up his hand to ward her off. “Jyn, please don’t…”

She sounds panicked when she next speaks, as if now that the words have started, she can’t make them stop.

“It was different, before, when it was just us. And I thought maybe it would be enough, but it isn’t. I wanted too much.”

Cassian didn’t ask for an explanation – frankly, Cassian would have said he didn’t want to know – but that strikes him, and he finally meets her eyes, brow furrowed.

“Too much?” he asks incredulously. Thinking: _but I’ve already given you everything_.

“The Rebellion, it…it will always be. Oh, don’t make me say it, Cassian.”

“I don’t understand. The Rebellion? Force take the Rebellion, Jyn. If you want to leave again, if this is too much for you, we can leave!”

“No!” Jyn’s voice is surprisingly harsh, angry, in response to his slightly elevated tone. “I don’t want you to give up everything for me. That isn’t what I want. I just can’t…I can’t be enough for you, can I? Draven was right. He was the one who said…and Leia, too, she…it’s just…I’ll never be enough, and that’s…I just need to not…” she sighs, more of a groan of her frustration than anything else. For once, he isn’t the one casting about uselessly for words that won’t come. She throws her hands up. “I’m afraid, Cassian.” Vengeful, like he’s dragged it out of her, though he knows her anger is likely reserved for herself for admitting to any fear at all. “I’m afraid that one day you’ll wake up and realize that I’ve never been enough for you, and it’s just taken you this long to…”

“That’s how you’ve been looking at _me_ ,” Cassian insists. He can’t help it. It’s too unfair, for a moment, for her to say those ridiculous things about him when all he’s wanted, all he is, is tied up in her and Rogue One and, yes, of course, the Rebellion. But flying with her around the galaxy, fighting the Empire, of course that would have been enough. How could she not have seen that? “Like you’re halfway to another star system already. Like I’ll wake up and you’ll be gone again, leaving me with nothing but another datapad note.”

She stiffens to hear that, and he feels his stomach go cold to say it.

“I wouldn’t…I…that was _different_ ,” she says, voice low and hard, and Cassian can’t tell what’s stronger, the fury or the grief.

“Different? Different from telling me that it’s your fault for this, when everything you’re telling me is saying that it’s _mine_? That you for some reason think that you know what I want? I thought you knew me better than that. To presume you know how I feel about this…”

“What else am I supposed to think?”

“You’re supposed to listen to _me_! Not Draven. Not Leia or the rest. _Me_. Can’t you see that I’m not the man I was before you? That I have something to live for now that isn’t just the next mission? They don’t see it, they never have, but you were supposed to know me enough to tell!” He’s being cruel, his tone twisted, biting, and he hates it. He particularly hates the way his voice shakes on the words as if they’re still somehow restrained even though he’s spilling everything, to his own discredit. The words that come out next are in Festian, without his even meaning to, and he bites his lips together and breathes out through his nose, reclaiming some of his calm before trying again, in Basic this time. “Jyn if you can’t... if it’s because of what you want, I would understand.” He remembers her saying roughly the same thing to him, the first night they spent together in earnest, and he hopes that she remembers. “But you…you have been hiding from me, and if you were being honest just now, if this is because of me in that way, you’re wrong. And I need you to know that.”

“Cassian…” she says, and she looks away, and she’s angry. Angry with him for even opening the conversation, probably. She would rather they hadn’t said anything at all. Rather spend their lives in that halfway place where neither of them were truly happy. He glances at the clock. He has to _go_. “What is it?” she asks, noticing.

“I need to leave,” he says. He sees her face shatter open, disbelieving, and though she just tossed his heart back at him, he hastens to alleviate her hurt because he would never just _leave_ her, and it twists in his gut, the fact that she thinks he would. “There is another component to this mission. For me alone. I’ll be back in an hour. Maybe two. But don’t worry until four.”

“ _What_?” she asks, lurching forward, up to her knees, grabbing his arm to stop him when he starts to stand. “Cassian, what aren’t you...” But she puts it together quickly. That’s no surprise. The surprise is probably that she doesn’t release his arm when she figures it out. If anything, she clutches him more tightly. “You didn’t tell me.”

“How could I?” Cassian asks, bitter, though he doesn’t pull away. His words are sharp as if to sever the connection between them, but she holds on, searching his eyes. “I was too worried about what you would say. And I was right to be.”

“That’s not what this is about.”

“Isn’t it?”

“ _No_ , Cassian. It’s…Cassian, I wasn’t…if I had known, I never would have taken this mission. You should have…”

But he shakes his head, and she cuts herself off. He takes her hand in his, briefly, but only to tug his sleeve from her fingers.

“I have to go,” he says again.

“I’m coming with you,” she says, starting to get up, casting about already for her bag with her traveling clothes. Cassian barks out a laugh, incredulous, standing up on the other side, the bed between them.

“No. It’s not for you, Jyn.”

“That’s ridiculous. That’s the whole point of having a partner on a mission. To watch your back.”

The unfairness of it, Cassian thinks, is a bit breathtaking. For Jyn to be looking at him with concern after she just broke him open with their conversation is too much for him to bear. He waves her off, irritated, grabbing his jacket. Watch his _back_?

“I don’t want you there,” he says, and he knows his voice is cold. He knows his eyes won’t be, will be reproachful, hurt, so he keeps them turned away.

“Cassian, I’m…”

“Better if I take some time, anyway,” he says, finally looking up at her, just for a second, to make sure that she’s still standing there, that she hasn’t made a move to get dressed, to follow him. “I need to…”

_Figure out what I’m going to do now? Figure out how I’m supposed to fill the void that will be inside of me where you burrowed a home for yourself and now say you can’t live any longer?_ He never finishes the sentence. There are a lot of things that Cassian needs to think about, and none of them are very pleasant. Force help him, but the assassination might be a welcome distraction.

* * *

Chirrut was right.

Infuriatingly, upsettingly, unsurprisingly, Chirrut was right.

Jyn’s not sure if she’s more annoyed with him for being right or annoyed with herself because she should have _known_ he was right, and she went and fucked it up anyway. Refused to listen to his appeal for her to believe Cassian when he said that he wasn’t going anywhere. No, she had to open her mouth and _tell_ him about the agony she’d been living in, trying to shut down the hope inside her heart that needed him too desperately for her to easily survive the separation she was so sure was coming. And she said it all in the _worst_ possible way. Half-truths and qualifications and panicked, inadequate words because the lack of anger, the lack of fight in his eyes when she first said the words, was so pained and yet so unsurprised.

She had been waiting for him to leave, to realize that she wasn’t enough, to give everything to the Rebellion and leave nothing behind for her or for himself, but she hadn’t counted on the fact that he seemed to have been waiting for the same thing.

And in protecting her heart, in doing what she thought, for a foolish moment, she had to do, she has broken his.

Four hours, he said, and she’s exhausted. It’s been an impossibly long day, and she’s been sleeping poorly in anticipation of this mission, and she should sleep to make the hours shorter, but she can’t. She stays wrapped in their bed, wearing her sleep pants and, in a masochistic impulse, his sleep shirt, smelling faintly of him.

Four hours pass, and now she’s allowed to worry.

She checks the news, scans the reports while the holovid broadcast plays, casting a green glow throughout the room. A visiting Imperial diplomat was killed, a man who had been teasing a secret announcement about information he discovered about the Rebellion. A sniper shot to the side of the head as he was entering a building. His guards apprehended the suspected shooter briefly, but he managed to escape.

She paces for a bit, refreshing her datapad to see if there are any updates. She curls up on her side in bed, listening to the broadcast with half an ear as she refreshes the datafeeds. But Coruscant is a big place, and there are so many things happening, and no new information about the assassination is given.

* * *

It has been more than five hours by the time the door opens. Jyn sits up, blaster pistol ready, and goes nearly boneless with relief when Cassian enters the room, locking it quickly and leaning back against it like he’s running from something.

“It’s all right,” he says when he sees her alarmed expression. “I wasn’t followed. Just…relieved.”

He lets out a shaky breath and peels off the black gloves he’s wearing, letting them fall to the ground. Beneath, his hands are red with blood, and Jyn sucks in a breath.

“I saw the news,” she says. “They had you.”

“And then they didn’t,” Cassian points out. He sheds his jacket and lets it fall with the gloves. He’s jittery, unfocused. Heedless of his blood-stained fingers, he runs his hand through his hair, and she catches sight of the tear in his gray shirt, the dark stain up his side, and her stomach drops. Cassian goes to the refresher, the light coming on, stark white against the dark green glow of the holovid screen. She turns the screen off, fumbling, grabbing the medkit from her bag and hurrying after him. Cassian’s already lifting his shirt up, exposing the long gash along his ribcage, hissing in a mixture of pain and that strange appreciation for the injury that warriors like them get sometimes.

“Fuck,” Jyn says, and the word has syllables, suddenly, with the way her voice shakes on it. He looks up from his examination in the mirror, surprise registering briefly to see her standing so close to him.

“No, it looks worse than it is,” he says, but his hands are trembling and making things worse, smearing blood on his skin.

“Here, stop,” she says, pushing past him, her hand automatically at his hip as she slides by, and she tries her hardest to ignore the reproving look her gives her, the slight flinch as her fingertips drag across his skin. She leaves her hand against him because she wants to feel he’s there, and because he doesn’t ask her to move it, and she turns on the water. It gushes out, the on-demand warmth of it a luxury for both of them, and Jyn is glad for the distraction as she tries to get it to a good temperature.

“You don’t have to…” he starts, but she shakes her head, looks back at him, digs the pads of her fingers even more deeply into his hipbone, too sharp and prominent against her hand.

“Four hours, and I was allowed to worry,” she reminds him softly. “It’s been more than five.”

He exhales heavily. It might be a sigh, but more likely it’s just held breath being released, and he nods. There are bruises under his eyes, his expression is tight with pain, but his eyes still refuse to meet hers, and she knows that despite what he’s just endured, she’s the one who has dealt him the most damage today. For a moment she resents herself so much for it that she almost leaves. Almost runs. But that isn’t _her_ anymore.

Chirrut was right, and she broke something tenuous and careful that had grown between she and Cassian. But it isn’t too late to fix this. And if the past five hours have taught her anything, it’s that while she might not be able to be entirely content with this half measured life she’s bound herself to, it’s far, far better than the alternative. She’ll take half of Cassian before thinking of releasing _any_ of Cassian again.

“Here,” she says. “Warm enough?”

Cassian leans past her, extending a hand with a grimace. When he finally touches the water, he nods.

“Thank you,” he says. It’s polite. Infuriatingly polite.

“Cassian, if I had known…”

“I know,” he interrupts. It would be the end of the conversation. It would send her out of the room. It’s difficult to imagine where it would go from here, except he follows it up with, “it doesn’t matter, anyway.”

“Of course it matters,” she says, not understanding the exhausted, bitter turn to his voice.

“Councilman Garot was going to expose Rebel spies. He had to die. Someone had to stop him.”

“It didn’t have to be you,” Jyn says. But that’s made Cassian angry again; he looks down at her, so close, and the despair in his expression alone would be too much to take, even if it wasn’t colored by the barely contained fury that bites into her.

“I don’t…” he starts, but he bites it off, stops himself, goes blank again.

She’s not sure she feels equal to asking him for anything, but still she says, “say it, Cassian. Whatever it is.”

They stare at each other, so close to each other, and it reminds Jyn sharply of their conversation after Eadu. Their argument. Bitterness and restraint and two people shoving up against each other, trying to force understanding on each other, battering at implacable defenses. It’s duller, now. Without the immediacy of the weight of Galen’s death between them, it’s not as hard to look him in the eye, and she knows that she deserves his rancor.

_Trust him_ , Chirrut had said. _Believe him_. And she had not, and she had spoken the darkest parts of her heart, and he had heard censure and blame that she had not meant to impart.

He seems to struggle with the idea of letting it out. He’s breathing hard, his eyes darting across her face. Finally, leaning in, looming, he says, “I don’t know what else you want from me. I don’t understand it. I have given you _everything_ I can give.”

“I know, Cassian,” she promises. Tears burn behind her eyes, but she doesn’t look away, doesn’t let herself lose the nerve. “What I was trying to say earlier. I…I don’t think I explained it well. Chirrut said it’s…he said it’s new to me, and that I’m just…overthinking things, and he’s right. I know he is. But tonight, earlier, after you said that thing in the shuttle.”

“What thing?”

“About children. And playing our parts. The things we were saying. We’re never going to have that. If we’re lucky enough to survive this fucking war, which we probably won’t, because you can’t shoot a man from thirteen stories up without taking a knife to the side, there will always be something else claiming you. And there’s nothing else claiming me. It _is_ my fault, Cassian. You said before that you doubted it, but it…it’s been too much. I panicked.” _I love you too much_ , her brain supplies, but she refuses to say that aloud. “I’ve never felt for anyone the way I feel about you.” Easier, an old standby, something they’ve each said to the other more than once before. “And sometimes, like tonight, it makes me so afraid of what I’ll do if you don’t feel the same.”

“How could you doubt?” Cassian wonders. Though he listened to her quietly enough, without interrupting, he now speaks with so much passion that she can tell he was holding himself back. “Jyn if you, if you want me to go, I’ll go. I’ll leave you alone. But I would _never_ choose that for myself. I never would.”

She doesn’t quite know what to say to that, but he’s waiting for an answer. Bloody, bruised, hurting, and he’s waiting for her to tell him the course their lives are going to take after this moment.

“Stay,” she says, even though that future heartbreak still tugs at her limbs, convinced after too many years of solitude and dashed hopes that this, too, will go wrong.

But it did go wrong, tonight, and she survived it, and she hated it.

It’s risk assessment. Probability. Not in the way of K-2SO’s numbers but in the way of Saw’s careful planning before Partisan battles. Collateral damage. Acceptable losses. What can I live with?

“I’m sorry. I’m _sorry_. Stay,” she says, and she only doesn’t kiss him because she doesn’t know what his answer will be, but she cups his jaw with her hand and rises up on her toes to lean her forehead against his.

He lets his eyelids flutter closed, and she looks at him, watches him, feels the warmth of his skin on hers. If he says no, right now, she thinks she will understand, but he nods, instead.

“Of course I’ll stay,” he says, as if it was never a question, and she tries so very hard to make herself believe that.

It’s his turn to cup her jaw with his hand, and he kisses her, and she can taste the uncertainty. The nervousness. The lack of faith that this is going to last. But it’s a start. She has to believe that it’s a start.

“Please get under the water,” she says when she pulls back only enough to speak, their foreheads still touching. His eyes open, and she looks at him steadily. She considers trying to smile, but it doesn’t feel right, yet. She just moves her hand down to his arm, and she squeezes it, and he nods again.

* * *

He’s exhausted, clumsy, and though he insists she doesn’t need to be there for it, she stands and watches him, leaning back against the sink, ready to help if she’s needed. Cassian washes carefully, scrubbing blood-stained hands and arms until they’re warm and pink and clean again. When he raises one elbow up, exposing the side with the stab wound, fumbling to get a good look at it under the spray, Jyn recognizes her cue and steps forward with a cloth, balancing his arm on her shoulder to allow her easier access.

“You’ll get wet,” he warns, lifting his arm again, and she _does_ smile up at him this time, though it’s tight, apologetic.

“It’s _your_ shirt,” she points out, and he lets out a huff of a laugh, relaxing against her.

She’s gentle about it, scraping the dried blood carefully, getting a better look at it once it’s clean. It isn’t as bad as she feared, but predictably it _does_ seem worse than he said, and though she’s careful with him, her attentions of course wind up opening the wound more. She grunts at him, nodding her head toward the controls. He turns the shower off with his free hand, the other fully braced on her shoulder now, and she grabs a towel from behind her, and she presses it up against the newly leaking cut.

They’re efficient. Wordless. He wraps another towel around his hips and she moves him closer to the mirror, where the light is brightest. The wound arches over his ribs, has cut deep divots into the soft skin between them, shallower cuts over the bones themselves, and she dries the skin carefully without looking at his face, though she sees his eyes on her out of the corner of her own eyes all the while.

When the area is dry, Cassian hands her a bacta patch, and she presses it into place, fingertips smoothing it with more care than is probably necessary. Even after she knows it’s in the right place, pressed neatly against his skin, she lingers, lets her fingers trail over the area. Cassian’s elbow is barely touching her shoulder, barely balanced, but at this show of softness, he unfurls it slowly, drawing his arm around her in half an embrace, his head leaning heavily on hers.

He’s still damp, and his skin is cold, and she wants nothing more than to get him into bed where she can stand watch over him, where she can at least ensure that he’ll be safe. After five hours of agony, the agony of not knowing where he was on several different levels, to have him touching her at all feels like some kind of triumph, even though all of this is her fault in the first place.

“Come on,” she says, quiet, like anything louder will break this spell and remind him of how she hurt him before he left. She tugs him out of the bathroom, gripping the hand that he has thrown over her shoulder, and it’s terribly reminiscent of Scarif when he stumbles a bit. Exhaustion. His old injury. His new injury. She doesn’t ask, just bears his weight. And he doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t try to do it himself. He just _allows_ her.

She lowers him into the bed, and he sighs, wincing against the pull of his wound.

But he says, as she’s pulling the blankets over him, “I don’t want you to be afraid.”

She sits on the edge beside him, and again it’s like being back at the beginning, the medical bay on Yavin.

“I know,” she says. He looks up at her like he’s squinting into the sun, his eyes pinched and pained, fighting to stay open. “But you’ve changed _everything_ for me, in so little time. There’s no way to not be a little afraid. I just…I’ve never had someone feel so essential.” It’s there, somewhere, the concept she’s going for, but she doesn’t have the sentence to form around it so she just says, “need,” like that’s a full thought.

“Need,” Cassian repeats, like it’s an agreement, and his hand reaches for her leg. Brushes over her thigh.

She gets up, then. Takes off the now-sodden sleep shirt and struggles out of the sleep pants. When she turns to face him, he’s watching her with heavily lidded eyes.

“I thought,” he says, starts, hesitates. Swallows before he tries to finish. “I thought you couldn’t…”

“I thought I couldn’t,” she agrees. “But I was wrong. And the alternative is worse.”

He doesn’t seem very satisfied with that, but he nods anyway. The words to explain it sparkle at the back of her mind, not quite formed, and she knows they aren’t going to come to her tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

When she’s down to her underclothes, rather than trying to find something not wet and bloodied to sleep in, she approaches the bed.

“Body heat,” she says, smiling, and his return smile is reluctant but warm, and he nods.

It isn’t enough for both of them. They’re both still shattered from earlier in the night and from the too-careful days that came before, but when she crawls under the covers and reaches for him, he comes willingly. He allows her to pillow his head on her chest, the way she knows he likes, though he pretends at indifference because he doesn’t like to admit that he needs to be held. He lets out a sigh that seems to empty every tension, but his arms are tighter than usual around her bare middle, fingers clutching at her in the way hers are clutching at him. It feels like if she just holds onto him tightly enough, she can keep him together. She can keep him from thinking about the trigger he pulled, the life he ended. She can keep him from worrying about anything at all. She can keep him _safe_.

“We’ll figure it out,” she promises. “I shouldn’t have kept it inside for so long. Only made it worse.”

He murmurs agreement, and she thinks that will be the end of it, but then he says, “you’ll stay?”

She drops a kiss to the top of his head, needing to, and she shifts her arms around him so they’re stronger, less loose, more certain.

“I’ll stay,” she says. A promise. Not just for tonight, but for all of them. He knows that, of course. He wasn’t asking about tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you as always to anyone still reading this absurdly long series! And big thanks to people commenting and making my shitty week a little less terrible!


	3. Are You Predicting the Future Now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read and commented! I appreciate you all so much!

The morning brings with it a feeling of reset, of renewed determination. As if both Jyn and Cassian are relieved to have survived the night.

Neither rises early, the way they usually do after an argument (avoidance, they’ve both found, is the best way to end almost any fight between them, because they’ll both get over it quick enough, once their tempers settle). It seems more important for them to stay together, skin on skin. Cassian’s head has moved up a bit in the night so Jyn’s face is pressed into his hair, and they both wake up together, the movement of one causing the movement of the other until they’re both blinking blearily, smiling at each other.

It still hurts. Jyn can feel it burning inside her, and she thinks it might be worse for Cassian. But they’re both still here, and there’s an understanding now. It doesn’t feel as inevitably doomed, as spiraling downward, as it did last night.

“Are you okay?” she asks. Her fingertips slide under his arm, stroking lightly over the patched-up injury, and Cassian nods, stifles a shiver. “Don’t take another assassination, Cassian. I know you don’t want to.”

“It made sense this time,” Cassian says, but despite the words he sounds morose. Haunted. She shifts herself closer, runs her fingers down his side again. He’s stiff, for a moment, and she’s worried, but the tension leaves him quickly, and he hastens to explain. “In the morning...you only get close like this at night. After we, uh.”

He still has trouble actually saying it, probably because she gagged loudly that one time Chirrut said “making love” and because simply saying “fuck” might be a little too coarse for him.

“Fuck,” she says.

“Right,” he replies, and his eyes crinkle at the corners though his small chuckle is mostly silent. Before she has time to doubt that he _wants_ her to get close like this, he pulls her closer, arm tightening around her waist.

“I always _want_ to stay in the morning, though,” she says. It’s quiet, like a whispered secret, because now, with everything open between them, she knows it’s absurd. Knows that _he_ thinks it’s absurd from the way he pulls back so he can look at her. “It’s just easier to get up.”

“Easier?”

“Protect your heart,” she says. It comes out bitterly, because she _feels_ bitter. “That’s what I always told myself.”

He murmurs something against the skin of her shoulder, something that might be Festian or just sleepy, accented Basic, but either way the meaning is clear: _that’s stupid_. She laughs a little, nuzzles deeper into his embrace.

The wounds aren’t closed. It’s an odd sensation, to still be so raw and yet so safe and wrapped up in him. To still hear the thrum of _protect your heart_ , over and over again, as if it will help, though their hearts are beating in time with each other, complementing each other, and she knows it’s far, far too late to do anything but see this through.

“But you’ll stay,” he says, meeting her eyes and she nods, trailing her fingers through his hair.

“I told you I would. And I meant it. But now, I need to shower. And we need to look at that cut again. And we need to get to Aeron.”

“Right,” Cassian says, the word a sigh, and he rests his forehead down against her chest, and she laughs, strangely lighthearted, strangely touched by the trusting gesture of his head bowed in front of her like this.

“I’m…” she starts, but a _sorry_ doesn’t need to mar this moment. Another apology will only bring them back to last night, will undo the work their late night closeness did to make things easier this morning. She sees the wariness in Cassian’s eyes as he props himself up on his elbow to look at her as she slides across the bed, away from him, standing up on the other side. “I need to get up,” she says. “Or I’ll start to be tempted to delay the shower.”

Cassian, grinning, one side of his mouth ticked up as if she hadn’t hurt him last night at all, says, “two hours before we can safely leave. They’ll all be gathered for their celebratory breakfast. We can slip out unnoticed.”

“Two hours,” she repeats, unimpressed, her hands on her hips. Cassian’s smile grows, because she’s considering it. She heaves a sigh and walks on her knees back across the bed. Cassian, anticipating her like he always does, eases onto his back against the pillow, one hand reaching up, ready to settle against her hip when she straddles him. “Suppose there are worse ways to kill two hours,” she says, and he grins up at her, and it feels _solved_ , for at least a few moments.

It’s not, of course. There’s still so much that burns inside her, but neither of them want to delve into it in the light of day. It’s better left to a huddled night, whispers given only inches in which to navigate from one to the other. She’s glad that he doesn’t think it would be better to maintain a distance between them until they can talk about it again. She’s glad that his instinct is the same as hers: to wind more tightly around each other, to capture each other. It strikes that old accusation of codependence, but she has long ago accepted about herself that Cassian is her home. That hasn’t ever changed.

“You have looked so sad,” he says, beneath her, his hardness in direct contrast to the look on his face: aching, still worried. She leans down to him, cards her fingers through his hair to push it back from his face as she kisses him.

“Do I look sad now?” she asks, and he lets out the small, nearly humorless laugh she loves so much.

“No,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean you aren’t.”

“No,” she agrees.

“You are always a little bit sad, I think.”

“So are you.”

He murmurs agreement at that, and this time it’s him who rises up, frames her face with his hands, takes charge of the kiss. Acknowledgement, she thinks, that he knows this might be difficult now, that he knows that things are strange between them. Acknowledgement, too, that he will do whatever he can to help fix it.

* * *

Leia knows what people think of her. She isn’t completely oblivious to the snickers about her height, about the constant clenching of her fists, about the red coloring in her cheeks when she talks to Han – yells at Han, to be fair. She knows that they respect her, her troops, but she also knows that they see her as something _other_. Something not quite real. A figurehead. A small, terrifying caricature of Rebellion spirit. _Surely_ , people think, _she won’t care about whatever silly, non-essential problem I’m having. Why would she?_

It’s a problem even with the people she considers her friends. Which is why she’s less than surprised that when she catches wind that things might not be quite right between Cassian and Jyn, it’s indirect, overheard. It’s when they’re in the shuttle, getting ready to pull into orbit around Aeron, and she hears K-2SO loudly say from the cockpit, “I don’t understand. What do you mean you’d go with _Jyn_?”

Bodhi, hissing out a loud curse that Leia’s actually quite shocked to hear from him, says, “look, it’s just, it’s hypothetical, yeah? Chirrut’s probably wrong about…”

“Statistically speaking, that is unlikely.”

“Shut up about statistics. Chirrut is wrong _all_ the time. He’s just good at smiling after he’s been found out and pretending like it was his plan the whole time! You’re supposed to be smarter than that.”

“I…well, that’s just…” obviously offended, K-2SO makes a mechanical noise of frustration. “Obviously I know he is not correct about everything he’s ever said. That would be impossible. However, he seems to have a better than average understanding of the way that Cassian and Jyn operate, especially around each other.”

“Jyn wouldn’t ever just leave. She wouldn’t. Not after it’s been done to her before. Last time was different.”

“Last time was for Cassian, yes. I agree. But Jyn Erso has an incredible ability to convince herself that she is doing any number of things _for_ other people, whether or not it would actually help them.”

A mildly shocked silence, and Bodhi finally says, “seriously? How the kriff did _you_ know that? That’s not even…that’s just insightful! I mean, for you, anyway.”

“If you are trying to placate me with flattery and make me forget that you said you would choose Jyn over Cassian, it has not worked.”

“Okay,” Leia says, sliding into the cockpit, her eyes glimmering with both mischief and concern for her friends – Jyn, maybe, is a little slower to warm up to her, but Cassian is most certainly her friend, and this earnest talk of who’s-going-to-go-with-who is upsetting. “Tell me everything. Now.”

Bodhi is horrified, big eyes wide as he gapes at her. K-2SO doesn’t even bother to turn around in his seat.

“Yes, we’re all _so_ very impressed that the princess surprised us for petty gossip,” he says, snarkier than usual. “I’m sure Bodhi will be happy to tell you why he’s going to betray his captain.”

* * *

It doesn’t take long. Bodhi is bad at discussing it, stammering through some half-understood explanation about Jyn’s fears. Leia gets the sense that she’s playing a game of comlink with them, and so she goes to the source: Chirrut, sitting on one of the few bunks in this tiny shuttle, his hands on his thighs, smiling as she knocks on the frame of the door to the crew quarters.

This shuttle they’ve taken to blend in on Aeron is small, cramped, and certainly that could be why he looks like he’s heard everything. And Bodhi might be right that he’s just particularly skilled at _seeming_ like he knows everything. But still, Leia doesn’t bother to explain.

“Tell me,” she says.

“I want you to understand that I am only telling you because I can tell that you are genuinely concerned.”

“Of course I’m concerned. Marriages are crumbling all around us. People are dying. I won the Hoth pool on the two of them finally fucking out all that tension. I don’t aim to lose the pool on their breakup.”

The startled look on Chirrut’s face at ‘fucking out all that tension’ is great, but she’s surprised to find that she’s too worried to take much pleasure in it, and it’s gone quickly anyway. Face smoothed over, Chirrut makes a thoughtful sound before speaking.

“They are young.”

Cassian is more than five years older than her, Jyn two or three, but Leia still murmurs an agreement. They’re _all_ younger than their years, even as they are all also older. That seems like the kind of thought Chirrut would appreciate, but she doesn’t share it.

“Is that all?” she prompts, and Chirrut smiles at her impatience.

“You know, it is remarkable, the kinds of coincidences that have to occur to bring people together. All of _us_ , for example. Or even just you and Luke. The number of things that had to happen to have you in the same place. The same planet, even, at the moment it mattered. For the droid to fall into the hands of an untrained Jedi. The Force has a way of pushing us to where we need to be.”

“Chirrut, we don’t have time for this banthashit,” Leia says, but she says it fondly enough. She knows he’s right. She thinks about it often. She wonders _what if father hadn’t sent me to Tatooine to find Kenobi?_ or _what if Luke hadn’t bought R2 when he did?_ or any number of combinations of events that would have left her stranded on the Death Star, would have left her without Luke and Han and all the rest. Chirrut smiles at her like he knows more than he’s letting on, which is, to be fair, his usual smile.

“Jyn and Cassian were both broken long ago by their respective experiences. Broken and then made whole by each other, the Force fitting them together like pieces that were missing, making the voids inside them a little smaller. But I fear that Cassian is less disposed, at the moment, to recognize those empty spaces as being spaces at all.”

“You’re badmouthing the Rebellion, aren’t you?”

Chirrut laughs, delighted.

“You’re observant. No one but Baze ever so astutely cuts past what I’m trying to politely say.”

“Politely,” Baze grumbles from another bunk across the room. Leia, who had thought for certain that he was sleeping, startles a bit and glances over. Baze hasn’t bothered to open his eyes.

“Yes, _politely_. But I know that you prefer blunt statements, princess, so: yes. The Rebellion has hurt Cassian. It has given him purpose, too. A thing is not always all bad for a person, but that does not make it good. And Cassian recognizes the scars that it has left in him, but I don’t think he understands just _how_ much he has given. It still clings to him, disquiets him, and so while he accepts Jyn into his heart, there is not enough space in it to contain what she has given to him.”

“I came here for gossip, Chirrut. Not an extremely metaphorical character breakdown.”

“This is his form of gossip,” Baze says. His eyes are open now, his expression towards Chirrut irritated but fond. A familiar feeling (a flash of a mocking grin, ruffled brown hair, and a black vest is smothered quickly within her). “He does not do anything easily.” Turning his gaze to Leia, Baze says, “Jyn is afraid she’s not enough. Cassian is afraid because he knows she is afraid, and he doesn’t understand why. It’s simple.”

“And you think _that_ is a good enough explanation of the problem?” Chirrut asks.

“The princess doesn’t have time for your banthashit,” Baze reminds him, and he rolls back over onto his side. Chirrut laughs, waves him off. Leia feels a quiet clenching of affection inside of her. They remind her of her parents, she realizes suddenly. Even arguments were fond, smiling things. She shoves that feeling down as well.

“You really think…” she starts, but she realizes she doesn’t know what to say without admitting that she thinks Chirut might be right. But, whatever. That shit-eating grin is on his face. He already knows. “The Rebellion. We gave him the chance to come back, and he declined.”

“Not entirely.”

“Well, fine, but he’s not with us. Not in the same way. And he seems to be doing well. Better than I’ve ever seen him, in fact. It doesn’t seem like the Rebellion is clinging to him at all.”

“You don’t change twenty years of programming in a few months without risking a few mistakes in the code,” Chirrut says. Leia’s eyebrows raise incredulously, and Baze scoffs before she has the chance to say anything.

“The code,” he says.

“Yes. An interesting metaphor, I thought, to compare him to his droid…”

“He’s a droid expert now. Wonderful. You should leave before he keeps going with this metaphor. When he thinks of something new to say, he will talk around it for hours before he whittles it down to something useful.”

“Oh, it’s far too late for you whether she leaves now or not,” Chirrut laughs, and Baze grunts with frustration.

“I should see how close we are,” Leia says, and Chirrut doesn’t try to stop her. Why would he? He knows that she’s thinking about it.

Has she been angry at Cassian for leaving? They were both in it together, she thought. Both of them raised in the Rebellion since they were children. But that isn’t quite right, is it? They had such different upbringings. The revelation of the things that Cassian had been doing for the Rebellion all those years should have made her realize it sooner. Cassian hadn’t done those things because he _wanted_ to, because he was so dedicated, because he understood the sacrifice that was being asked of him. Cassian had listened to Draven, had become the tool that Draven needed, because it was the way he was raised. The way he was _programmed_ , like Chirrut said.

Maybe there’s something still keeping him from turning away completely, from freeing himself from the way things have always been for him. If she ever had a thought to leave, would it be easy for her? That seems like a laughable thought, but she’s never had reason to wonder. Never had anything to care for beyond the Rebellion, beyond the cause.

Again that distracted flash of Han, and she shoves it aside more violently now, and she stalks off to the cargo bay still without having figured anything out.

* * *

It’s bad enough that Aeron is currently embroiled in a civil war, meaning that the planet is surrounded by Star Destroyers ready to deploy troops at a moment’s notice. That would be all that was needed to make this a miserable excursion, but the capital city of this province, where they hope to gain an alliance with Aeron’s ruling government, is also currently experiencing one of the worst rainy periods in its known history. When Bodhi opens the cargo bay doors for Jyn and Cassian, the wind slams into Leia’s jacket, flinging off her hood and whipping her hair into her eyes.

“Move!” Jyn snaps as she barrels aboard. She’s laughing, but only slightly. Mostly it’s disgust, and it’s easy to see why: she’s sodden. Her hood is a distant memory, and when she immediately shrugs out of her coat, water dumps from it, pooling at Leia’s feet, soaking her boots.

“What are you _doing_?” Bodhi asks, horrified, once he’s closed the door behind them. Cassian is shaking himself off like a Wookie, his fur collar giving off a pungent smell that makes Leia miss Chewie for a moment. “You’re flooding my ship.”

“I thought it was Leia’s ship,” Cassian says good-naturedly, clapping Bodhi on the shoulder on his way past. Bodhi stammers something indignant as he trails after the captain, but not before pressing something into Jyn’s palm, a shy smile on his face. Jyn continues to shed her outer layers, dropping them on the floor with her bag, and she wastes no time before fastening the item from Bodhi around her neck.

“What is that?” Leia asks. She probably wouldn’t ask normally, wouldn’t try to get _anything_ personal out of Jyn, but the slightly older woman looks friendly, half-drowned like this, probably glad to be out of the rain. She flashes a smile at Leia and starts gathering up her wet things.

“A kyber crystal. Do you…?”

“A kyber crystal?”

The voice comes from just outside the cargo bay, and Jyn sighs and slips the necklace off over her head again, stretching her hand out just as Luke trips his way in sight of the two women, his eyes big and excited. He takes the necklace with a smile and holds it up to the light. It _is_ rather pretty.

“I’ve heard the name, but I’m not sure I remember the significance,” Leia admits, craning her neck up to admire the effect of the light on the rough cut crystal.

“Jedi used to use kyber crystals to power their lightsabers,” Luke says. “I’ve been learning about them from Chirrut. They used to protect the Jedi Temple on Jedha, before the Empire destroyed it.”

Jyn, less enthusiastic, says, “kyber crystals were also used to power the Death Star. My father must have taken this from his work. I have one of those vague childhood memories of him giving it to my mother. And then she gave it to me, like she thought it would protect me.” A shrug, thoughtful. “I’m still here, so maybe she was right.”

It’s more than Leia has heard Jyn speak about her family in all the time that Leia has known her, and she’s afraid to ask for more. It seems selfish. Seems liable to push Jyn farther into herself.

“Why did Bodhi have it?” she asks instead, and Jyn smiles as she gently takes it back from Luke’s hands.

“I gave it to him when I left Yavin, when Draven was being a dick. Sometimes I hand it off when I’m going on a mission or leaving home for a bit. Makes him a little less nervous.”

She shrugs like it isn’t a big deal, but the softness in her eyes is obvious as she squeezes the crystal against her palm. Luke seems disappointed when it vanishes back beneath her shirt.

Leia thinks it’s less of a surprise now, to hear that Bodhi would choose to leave with Jyn, if she _did_ leave. But then she immediately feels guilty: she shouldn’t know that.

“Everything go okay on Coruscant?” she asks. Jyn looks her over once, as if remembering to be annoyed. She shrugs, petulant, and Leia figures the assassination conversation probably didn’t go _great_.

“We got the information. And Garot is dead.”

Leia doesn’t rise to the bait, and Jyn doesn’t press the matter any farther. Just stalks out of the cargo bay to join the others.

“Was that part of the mission?” Luke asks, quiet. Leia knows that Luke, for all his seeming naivety, is old enough and savvy enough to know that the Rebellion doesn’t always shine. But she can’t quite bring herself to be the one to break it down farther.

Not that the silence that is her answer leaves much to be interpreted.

* * *

Cassian knows there is a lot to do, now that they’re all back together again, but he still makes the time to check in with everyone, make sure they’re all ready. Baze is still a little lethargic from the cold he has been adamantly denying he’s had for the past week and a half, and Chirrut is in even better spirits than usual. Cassian assumes it has something to do with having a captive audience in this tiny shuttle, but when he sees the mischievous expression on the blind guardian’s face, he realizes that it might not be so simple.

“How did it go?” Chirrut asks. _Far_ too innocent. He isn’t even trying not to be obvious.

“Fine. The mission was completed successfully.”

“I meant your conversation,” Chirrut replies, maddening as always.

“I…what?”

“The tension between you two is lessened. I gather there is still a lot of work to do, but that is true of any lasting love. Especially one between two such fragile people.”

Cassian has the presence of mind to close the door to the crew cabin, blocking off the rest of the ship.

“Maybe next time you could step in with this infinite wisdom _before_ it reaches this point,” he says pointedly. Chirrut only smiles that vague, reassuring smile.

“Ah, but that would be cheating,” he says. Baze makes a grumbling sound from his cot. Barely awake but awake enough to know there’s some Chirrut nonsense happening. “This is a journey you need to weather on your own, Captain. Well, not on your own. I can give you some advice.”

“I can’t wait to hear it,” Cassian mutters.

“It isn’t that she doesn’t love you, or that she doesn’t trust you. I would say that she thinks she loves you more than she should. More than you’re ready for. And she has given too much of herself to you, has come to rely too much on you, and has found herself without room enough inside you to fit it.  Love is a compromise, which is something she understands well enough. I’m sure you do as well, but you both have different ideas of what it means, and it is taking time to understand each other. There is much that both of you could do to improve your own emotional state. But it’s early days. These things have a way of sorting themselves out. You just need to have patience.”

“She nearly ended it, Chirrut,” Cassian says. He doesn’t want to say it, doesn’t want the words to exist out loud because that will make them real. “She told me she wasn’t sure she could do it. I don’t think patience is the problem.”

“She’s here, isn’t she?”

“Yes. But that doesn’t mean…”

“This is causing you much anxiety, but do you doubt her? Do you doubt that she cares for you and wants to be with you?”

“No, but if I’m hurting her by…”

“Jyn is fierce, my boy, but she’s also a skittish creature. It is easy to cause her hurt. She causes much of it to herself. It is much harder to make that hurt unbearable. If she wanted to leave, she would. It’s what she knows best. She would disappear. Love is compromise, as I said, but it also tends to be an exquisite kind of pain. She has avoided it for her entire life, but now? Now, she believes it to be worth it. She believes _you_ to be worth it. She will weather it, as will you, and you will come out stronger for it.”

“Are you predicting the future now?” Baze wonders, rolling over to look at them.

“No, my love. This is where faith comes in. You should go back out there, Captain. They will get suspicious.”

“Right,” Cassian says. He half turns to leave, but stops himself. Makes himself say, “thank you, Chirrut,” before he goes.

He hates to admit it, even to himself, because it will only make Chirrut worse, but the conversation helps. It always seems to help when Chirrut is so optimistic. Cassian tries to hold himself apart from it, usually. Tries to remain cynical enough to prepare for the worst, even if it never comes to pass, but this is different. He lets Chirrut’s words and Chirrut’s certainty sink into his heart. Partly, he thinks it’s because it’s the conclusion he reached already.

Last night, after he left to complete his mission, Cassian had a lot of time to think. Waiting for Garot to appear. Waiting for the right shot. It was a bleak, restless few hours of trying to figure out a plan. Trying to figure out what he was going to do when she was gone for good. But when he returned to their room and saw her waiting for him, when he felt the worry from her fingertips when they pressed against his skin, he knew that they were both too close, too in love, to leave each other without giving it every effort.

And she told him to _stay_.

* * *

“Cassian, I cannot go with you,” K-2SO says, barely a moment after Cassian steps into the main hold of the shuttle. Jyn is still soaked, toweling off her hair idly, without much enthusiasm. There’s a folded pile of clothing near her feet. Clean clothing, obviously fairly ornate. Her outfit for whatever the next part of this mission is. That means they’re leaving soon, then. Wasting no time. He scans the room for his own pile of clothing and spots it: a green hooded jacket is laid out on top, identical to what Jyn has in her own pile. They’ll be performing a part as bodyguards, or maybe fellow diplomats. Partners, whatever else they’ll be. Bodhi’s holding his clothing to his chest, obviously nervous about it, and Luke is trying to figure out the clasps on a too-silky shirt, the rest of his disguise thrown haphazardly onto the table. Leia’s watching them all with her arms crossed over her chest, her expression blank, but Cassian knows her well enough to know that she’s amused by all of this.

He realizes that he hasn’t responded to K-2SO’s passive-aggressive attempt to engage him in conversation, so he makes a quietly questioning noise as he looks back towards his friend.

“He’s being dramatic about the rain, and he won’t let me put him in a poncho,” Bodhi explains. Luke ducks his head to hide a smile.

“I’ve been trying to tell him he’ll look sharp in a poncho,” Jyn says, and it’s like every conversation they’ve had since they became friends, amused affection boiling inside her, and Cassian feels such relief. Last night and this morning were such charged moments in time, and they felt like they marked something that would change _everything_. But he doesn’t want everything to change. He doesn’t want to lose any part of what he has with her. Especially not the part that made them friends and partners before she had ever even kissed him.

“Oh, no doubt, K,” Cassian says. “I have that poncho that is slightly large on me anyway. It would be perfect.”

“I am not going to be fooled by this,” K-2SO says, turning away from all of them and pressing a few buttons on the climate controls that surely don’t need to be pressed while the shuttle is powered down. Jyn is biting her cheek to keep from laughing, and she exchanges an easy grin with Cassian.

Something is aching inside both of them, he knows. He can’t entirely miss the tension behind her eyes. But when he puts his hand on her shoulder, her smile softens, and she leans into it, comfortable and casual.

“No one’s trying to fool you, K!” she says, too brightly to be sincere. “It’ll look amazing!”

“No. I know you’re making fun. Someone should stay with the ship in any case, and that will be me.”

“Actually, not to ruin the joke?” Bodhi says with a reluctant sigh. “But think of K2 in a diplomatic situation. Kriff, think of _me_ in a diplomatic situation. Can _I_ be excused from this next bit?”

“No,” Leia says, but she softens her refusal by smiling fondly at him. “I need a retinue. What kind of diplomat would come to an official meeting with a depleted entourage? It would positively shame my entire planet.” Silence, for a moment, and she heaves a sigh. “That was a _joke_ , you ungrateful jerks. I’m trying to keep the mood light.”

“I thought it was funny,” Chirrut yells from the crew quarters.

“At least one of you has a sense of humor. And you’re going to need it. The Aeronian ambassador is an asshole. But they need this data, and now that you’ve so handily stolen it, I hopefully won’t have to pull too many teeth to get them to agree to an alliance. But if I do…”

“No disrespect, your highness…”

“Call me that again, and I’ll consider it disrespectful,” Leia says, but even _she_ tempers her tone when it comes to speaking to Bodhi. The pilot swallows hard and forces himself to continue even though her words give him pause. They may not have been very harsh, but it’s _Bodhi_ , who is still so very sensitive to censure from people he admires.

“I just…don’t see the point of me being there? I’m a terrible liar. Anyone will tell you.”

“I will tell you,” K-2SO agrees.

“See?”

“Bodhi, you being there makes me look more official,” Leia says, her tone patient, infused with the sound of her smile. “You will be presented as my assistant, don’t worry. No need to speak to anyone important. You just need to look like you’re paying attention, jot a few notes down on a datapad. Simple enough.”

Another fond look passes between Cassian and Jyn, and he can tell they’re in agreement: it _sounds_ simple enough, but Bodhi will somehow find a way to make poking at a datapad look like performance art. It will be obvious. Not at all natural. But Jyn lifts one shoulder in half a shrug, and he agrees with that, too: he might surprise them.

“I wish I _could_ be there,” K-2SO says blandly. “To see how badly this goes for all of you.”


	4. I Won't Just Disappear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a warning for what is KIND OF a cliffhanger? I'm not sure it qualifies, but it's sort of a dickish place to end the chapter. I initially ended it in the previous scene and left the next scene til Chapter 5, but it didn't work well, was a little too jarring, and so I moved it back to Chapter 4. So just...here's a warning for those of you who don't like cliffhangers!

True to Cassian’s initial observation, he and Jyn are indeed dressed in matching uniforms. Because of their ability to blend in and look physically unintimidating when it serves them, they are Leia’s advisors. Their job is to stand, respectfully quiet, behind her chair to offer whispered advice and encouragement when necessary, ostensibly. In reality, they will be informing her of any observations about the others in the room: _favoring his right hip, which means he has a blaster concealed there, ready to use it._ That kind of thing.

Bodhi is her assistant, dressed in a fine uniform that he keeps running his hands over disbelievingly. Leia and Chirrut wrangled his hair into something half-fashionable in the Core worlds, but he’s under strict instructions not to touch that, so he doesn’t, instead taking pleasure in smoothing the already-carefully-ironed fabric to make sure that not even a dream of a wrinkle forms.

Chirrut, allowed to wear his usual robes, is given the lofty title of Religious Advisor, which will, according to Leia, give them some clout with the ambassador, as his wife is a very religious woman.

“The religion itself doesn’t matter so much with her,” Leia explains. “It’s the spirituality of it. According to my source, she hosts people from all sorts of religious backgrounds. The ambassador will likely want to ask you some questions, probably intending to see if his wife will want to invite you for tea, so you may have to make up some banthashit to get by.”

“Fear not, princess,” Chirrut says with mock formality. “I believe I can hold my own in that regard.”

“I have no doubt, Guardian,” Leia says, her own attempt at formality somewhat thwarted by her wry grin.

That leaves Luke for a fellow diplomat – it’s a bit risky, Cassian thinks, to have the Jedi on this mission at all, especially in a position where he might be called on to share an opinion on something he has no idea about, but he doesn’t challenge Leia about it. It’s too late by this point to raise objections, and he isn’t going to begrudge her the comfort that having friends close by can bring.

At that thought, he feels a small amount of pleasure. Something like spite. Flashes back to Kazadu, Draven telling him how much he has changed. When he was Cassian Andor, consummate Rebel spy, he would have detailed his concerns to Leia far earlier than this. He would have refused to allow Luke along. Leia saying that she wanted him for moral support would have been a ludicrous argument that he never would have let stand.

Draven was right. He _has_ changed. And he increasingly would not change back for all the worlds.

Baze, of course, is chosen as a bodyguard, a fact that brings him obvious pride and makes his smile even wider when Chirrut is offended that _he_ was not chosen for the position.

“I need to be strategic about how I place you,” Leia points out in the patient, kind voice that works on everyone but Cassian, who knows her too well now to fall for it. He knows that he and Leia have many things in common, but Leia has always outstripped him in this. Then again, she was trained for it. “Besides, the element of surprise it would give you if you _did_ need to come to my aid? Far worth the price of wounded pride, I think.”

Chirrut thus appeased, Leia turns to Cassian and tilts her head towards the cargo bay. He follows her when she goes, shrugging at Jyn’s questioning look: he has no idea what she wants. Once she closes the door behind them, cutting them off from the others, he feels a twinge of worry. Is _she_ going to ask him to perform an assassination, too? That doesn’t seem likely, but if it was important enough, she might swallow her distaste and do it.

He hopes she doesn’t. He would probably say yes.

“I’m sorry about Garot, Cassian,” she says. Cassian merely nods, and he can tell that she can’t read anything from his closed off expression. She seems frustrated. “I tried to shoot the idea down, but…”

“But he needed to die,” Cassian finishes, when she can’t quite seem to.

“I suppose so, yes. I don’t like…well. Pointless to stand around saying what I do and don’t like about the reality of our situation. The fact is that these are steps that need to be taken to win the war. Draven and Mon Mothma were right to make the decision that it needed to be done. But…I’m sorry for the way we handled it. Telling you and Jyn separately. _Tricking_ you in that way. Like a bunch of children playing games. I imagine that wasn’t an easy conversation to have with her once she realized.”

Cassian isn’t the type to share more than he has to. He never has been. And after such a long, emotionally draining confrontation with Jyn and then the slightly less trying but still fraught conversation with Chirrut, he should be finished with talking about his personal life for the next several years.

But something inside him makes him want to say, “well, we were in the middle of an even more difficult conversation. The assassination was more of a way to get away from it than anything else. Made it easier than it had any right to be.”

“Easier,” Leia repeats. Her tone is too practiced to be anything but unsettled. She has probably taken it to mean that there was anything easy about pulling the trigger. He doesn’t let himself think about it often, but at the assumption, he can’t help but wonder what she thinks of him. Does she know how every death, even the ones that are deserved, that are for people like Garot or Admiral Raleigh or Orson Krennic, swallows up some part of himself that he can never seem to get back? Or does she think that he’s the kind of man who can force his mind to be as blank as the expression on his face? She doesn’t look at him like she might look at a monster, but then again, maybe she’s just good at hiding it.

“Easier to tell her. Never easier to do it.”

“Of course,” Leia says, and even _that_ is impossible for Cassian to interpret. He tries to hide his irritation, but the impulse to scrub his hand through his hair is impossible to ignore, and he knows how much of that is a desperate tell.

“It just… there wasn’t time to explain. And she hasn’t asked about it since. She probably _was_ angry. Might be waiting until we’re done with this mission to let me have it. I expect some trouble when she next sees Mon Mothma. And Draven may as well be dead already. It was near impossible to keep her from causing trouble at Echo Base last time we saw him. It will be hopeless now.”

Leia laughs, but it’s the polite sort of laugh that a person gives you when they’re waiting to get back to something you said before the punchline. And this is Leia Organa, which means that she wastes no time.

“Your difficult conversation with Jyn. I’m less surprised to hear about that than I would have been only yesterday. Your team is worried about you. Bodhi and K2 were arguing about who would go with who after the apparently inevitable split.”

_Now_ he’s defensive, and his shoulders hunch the way they do when he’s bracing for a blow.

“They…I don’t know where they got that idea.”

“Of course you do.” When his expression remains questioning, she smirks. “Chirrut.”

“Well, of course it was him causing trouble. But he seemed…hopeful to me, earlier. Maybe he was just doing that to be polite.”

“That doesn’t sound like him.”

“He _was_ being suspiciously sincere.”

“He seemed suspiciously sincere when he was talking to me, as well. But a man can be both worried and hopeful at once. He’s very parental towards you. Towards both of you. He just wants you to be happy.”

“I know that. Doesn’t mean it isn’t annoying.”

“Well, he told me all this after you had been gone for a few days. Maybe he was feeling particularly maudlin. Who knows? You two seem fine to me.” But she’s watching him with that shrewd, careful eye. She looks nothing like her dead father, but Cassian always sees Bail in those expressions. She has his same lack of patience for secrecy, too. “ _What_ , Cassian? What is it?”

“Why are you always so…?”

“Charming? Witty? I’ve heard ethereal before, but Solo was drunk, and can be forgiven for it.”

“No. Ethereal? Has he ever _spoken_ to you?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

He sighs, lowers his head, puts his hands on his hips. It’s as if the words are being dragged out of him, although he knows that isn’t the case. He knows that he _wants_ to tell her. For the first time in a long time, he wants to tell almost everyone.

Cassian is used to being self-sufficient on almost every level. It is a strange thing to want people to advise him on what to do next. To _need_ it, in fact. To have no idea what the best course of action is. Maybe that just tells him how important Jyn has become to him. She has changed so much in his life in the time in which he has known her. Why not change this, too?

“Persistent, I was going to say. Because you won’t drop this until I say something, right?”

“And you’ll keep dodging my questions until you snap and finally fill me in, yes. Unless you want to be more of an adult about it.”

“Chirrut tells me that there’s still too much of myself locked up in the Rebellion. And too much keeping Jyn from fully embracing it. Neither of us are used to this yet. I don’t know how right he is, but…I’ve come to trust his judgment, at least on things like this.”

“Too much of you tied up in the Rebellion?” Leia wonders. She sounds doubtful at first, but her expression darkens. Thinking of the assassination again? Probably. “Well, he might have a point.”

“I think he was telling me I don’t know how to love. Not as much as she needs me to, anyway.”

“Just because it’s hard for you to show it?” Leia’s automatically defensive reply is a little telling, indicates something that hits a bit too close to home, and she seems to realize it. Flushes, slightly. A rare surprise, for Leia to be embarrassed enough to show color in her cheeks (Cassian would never, on pain of death, say it, but the joke resides in his brain anyway: the pointed observation that there is a certain smuggler around whom her flushes are all but certain). “Oh, stop it. I’m happy for you, you nerfherder. Both of you. I think you know how to love her fine. Happy?”

“I didn’t make you say it,” Cassian says with a small laugh.

“You know you did. With your stupid sad eyes. That thing you do where you look up through your eyelashes is a _weapon_ , which is why you do it. Look, I’m too angry to keep talking about this for much longer, but…for what it’s worth, I understand what you’re saying. But I understand Jyn, too. When you give so much of yourself over, it’s easy to feel…overwhelmed. Especially if you don’t know how the other person thinks. It can’t ever just be simple?”

“Is that a question? I thought you were supposed to be comforting me.”

“You wish. I’m trying to keep you from ruining my chances of winning the bet.”

Cassian groans, puts his hand on his forehead.

“Do I _want_ to know what bet this is?”

“When the two of you are going to split up and destroy your entire team, obviously.”

Cassian feels the sting of betrayal a bit more than he would like, and he knows it comes out in his expression from the way Leia laughs, harshly.

“Thanks for the support,” he says.

“You don’t even know what I gave you, Cassian,” she points out, patting him on the arm as she starts to walk past him, her diplomatic robes swishing loudly in the otherwise silent compartment. She pauses before she exits. “Til death, in case you were wondering.”

* * *

The Aeron nobility are the same as any nobility anywhere, as far as Jyn is concerned. These nobles all have rigidly straight posture, like their clothes are reinforced with steel, and they wear facepaint like warpaint, though with intricate, swirling designs. It looks like some of the images that she remembers seeing of nobles in Theed, when she was very young, except less elaborate, extravagant. Everything is more delicate. It makes them seem more vulnerable, kinder, sweeter than they are.

She knows that that’s what they want, though, and so she doesn’t let her guard down. If _Leia_ is concerned about this meeting, she knows what that means.

Leia was mostly protected from the rain by her hood, but Jyn’s hair is still wet from when she and Cassian had to run across the square from the public transport, and she’s already shivering, cold and unsettled. Cassian looks similarly miserable; he also has little patience for these kinds of things, though, so that might be unavoidable. Bodhi and Luke are chattering away easily enough with Leia, Bodhi having relaxed considerably into his role as assistant to the princess – playing a role in which he is not expected to know anything appeals to him, Jyn thinks. Chirrut and Baze are both blank, though Baze looks slightly grumpy to be wearing a stiff, formal outfit.

Jyn feels surprisingly natural in this role of advisor, mostly because her whole job is to look vaguely suspicious of everyone and yet non-threatening to the ambassador they’ll be meeting with. The former is natural, and the latter is something she’s been using to throw people off for years. She and Cassian walk just behind Luke and Bodhi, Leia slightly ahead of everyone, with Baze and Chirrut just behind. Jyn was concerned that there would be some formal, extremely difficult-to-figure-out customs at play, but considering this is a _covert_ diplomatic mission, she isn’t too surprised to find that they’re ushered along the halls quickly, all of them with their hoods pulled up to hide their faces, greeted by quiet-voiced assistants and led to the conference room in which the meeting will take place.

* * *

Leia is charming when she wants to be. The brash, exciting, witty woman that Jyn has gradually come to know, _that_ Leia vanishes beneath seventeen layers of practiced amusement and kindness. This isn’t the stern commander or the sparkling force of nature who greeted them after Scarif and struck even _Cassian_ speechless with her gratitude. This also isn’t the woman who likes to laugh loudly at Chirrut’s dirty jokes and who has very earnestly attempted to outdrink Jyn several times – unsuccessfully so far, but as she always points out: you don’t become an expert without practice. 

Jyn doesn’t like this diplomatic, smoothed-over, honey-voiced version of Leia very much, and she has a feeling that Leia probably isn’t too fond of having to wear this mask and become this woman either.

But one thing that can certainly be said for her: this Leia is good at what she does. Jyn doesn’t completely pay attention to the proceedings: civil war, both sides leveraging for Alliance support against the Empire’s increasingly-strangling blockade, thinly veiled threats about turning Leia over to the Emperor if she doesn’t help. The ambassador is a dark haired man of about Cassian’s height and build, but without any of the feral sharpness that made Cassian so interesting to Jyn even back when she didn’t know him. He’s a careful man, soft, the kind of man who thinks for a long while about all of the words he wants to say before he says them. A man who never smiles without some kind of edge behind it, some kind of knowing expression on his face. Like he knows something that no one else in the world is privy to. He makes Jyn’s skin crawl, but he doesn’t seem to bother Leia too much. Then again, Jyn would never be able to tell if he did. Leia is almost as frustrating as Cassian when it comes to the whole blank-faced thing.

The one thing this meeting most certainly _is_ is boring. It’s also unbearably long, two politicians talking around each other in falsely pleasant tones of voice, not seeming to make any headway. Jyn several times looks over at Cassian to see how he feels about it, and he almost always gives her an imperceptible head shake of apology but no other indication as to whether he thinks the talks are going well or not.

It’s hours before Leia finally stands from the table and reaches out to shake the ambassador’s hand, a perfectly pleasant smile on her face.

Her apparent serenity lasts until they’ve returned to their ship.

“Of all the puffed up, ridiculous, asinine assholes I’ve ever had to deal with,” she fumes, throwing her wet hooded robe across the shuttle, where it lands with a comical flopping noise. Jyn glances over at Cassian, who shrugs a little helplessly. Great. He’s supposed to know what to do here.

“What? I thought that went well,” Luke says brightly. “He seemed nice enough.”

“Oh, Luke,” Leia sighs, as if his innocence is particularly endearing after hours of dealing with such practiced diplomacy.

“No?” Luke asks.

“He was threatening all of us. Me and Bodhi in particular.”

Bodhi, still fussing with his uniform, freezes just inside the cargo bay door.

“What? _Me_? Why me?”

“He thinks you’re a spy.”

“He thinks _Bodhi_ is a spy?” Cassian asks. He sounds, Jyn thinks, a bit jealous.

“He’s convinced that we’ve already made a deal with the anarchists and are plotting to take down his government.”

“To be fair, though…that’s not exactly _not_ what we’re doing,” Cassian points out.

“Really? Is _that_ what we’re doing?” Bodhi asks, eyes wide. Cassian’s lips press together in a thin line, and he looks pointedly at Jyn. _Not a spy_ , her brain supplies helpfully, in Cassian’s prissiest possible voice. She fails to hide a small laugh. Leia ignores all of them, rubbing her upper arms to warm herself up as she paces, mind obviously hard at work.

“Okay, so _technically_ he’s not wrong, but he has no evidence! He’s just being paranoid. What have I said about being pedantic?”

“I’m not…” Cassian says, but he makes a strangled sound that Jyn realizes is an aborted laugh, and her eyebrows raise.

“I’m sorry, are you _laughing_?” she asks, already laughing too. “In a mission briefing? Are you okay?”

“Stop being disgusting, both of you,” Leia snaps, her own grin very unsuccessfully hidden behind a mighty glare.

“Is he going to kill me or not?” Bodhi asks.

“If anyone’s interested in hearing _my_ take on this?” Chirrut asks. Luke turns to him eagerly while Cassian, Jyn, and Baze groan openly. Leia and Bodhi fall somewhere in the middle.

K-2SO, still hidden away in the cockpit, says, “not really, no.”

It’s no surprise then that Chirrut directs his advice primly to Luke, with a few nods towards Leia.

“The ambassador is expecting an attack. I don’t know if he’s had outside knowledge of this or if he’s simply vigilant, but the increased security around the palace would indicate the former. The data we supplied might assuage his fears of Imperial interference for now, if the leverage it gives him over the governor proves to be enough. But that won’t stop the anarchists from retaliating, and I believe his concerns to be valid ones. If they get wind of his plan to work with the Empire, whether or not they know it to be blackmail, they may think they have no choice but to strike. It would be best if you reached out to your anarchist contact and told her that the talks have so far been productive. Urge patience.”

“I can’t imagine she’ll listen to me on _that_ front,” Leia sighs. “How concerned should I be?”

“How much do you trust the ambassador’s instincts?”

“He’s a career politician, and a good one. If he’s concerned enough to show his hand with increased security, then I’d say there might be a problem brewing. But he also might be showing off, might be trying to make sure the anarchists don’t fuck up his opportunity for this alliance to be made. There are a lot of options.”

“This was always going to be a delicate diplomatic waltz,” Chirrut says, sparking another look between Jyn and Cassian.

“Diplomatic waltz?” Cassian mouths incredulously, and Jyn rolls her eyes.

“Of course it was,” Leia agrees, dismissive. “But it relies on the anarchists at least giving me a chance to _talk_ to the man.”

“They must suspect Imperial involvement,” Cassian says. “According to all the Intel reports I’ve read, the anarchists suffered heavy losses in the bombardment of Pelsha. They might feel like they’re running out of time. I could catch a transport to Lower Mair, try to infiltrate, see what I can find out.”

“No, too risky. They’re _anarchists_ , Cassian. And they aren’t even particularly good anarchists, according to the info Draven got us.”

“Right, and I’m technically not Rebellion anymore,” he points out.

“And the anarchists are basically Partisans. I could…” Jyn starts, but Leia shakes her head again, and Jyn falls into simmering silence.

“No. Splitting our strength now just puts us in a more vulnerable position. We need to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice, and we have to assume that they won’t hesitate to use us against each other, if given the opportunity. Splitting apart now isn’t the right move, and that’s my final decision.”

Cassian sighs, but gives her a sharp, respectful nod.

“Well then what _are_ we going to do?” Luke asks.

“We see this through,” Leia replies. “We stick to the plan. Negotiations will continue tomorrow, and I’ll put that asshole in his place, and we’ll secure the Aeronian government’s support. We won’t need to worry about the anarchists at all. All of this is under control. It’s all going exactly how it should be.”

This time, Jyn doesn’t _have_ to exchange a doubtful look with Cassian. They both know exactly what the other is thinking.

* * *

It takes shoving him into the shuttle’s tiny, only refresher, but Jyn finally gets a few seconds alone with Cassian.

“What are you thinking?”

“She made her decision,” Cassian says, obviously uncomfortable. Jyn thinks the discomfort is borne of the fact that she’s questioning Leia’s orders until he tries to wriggle around her to get out, saying, “they’re going to think...”

“Maybe. Who cares? That’s why I locked the door.”

“What if someone has to…?”

“Cassian! _Focus_.”

“Okay, this is a _very_ small space, and you expect me to focus?” Cassian whispers, doing his best to shift his weight away from her. Jyn grins up at him, but he gives her his best attempt at an intimidating glare.

“Are you going to go to Lower Mair anyway?” she asks.

“I…what? No! We can’t go rogue _all_ the time!”

“Isn’t that sort of what they get? Choosing _us_ for this particular mission?”

“Well I doubt they would be overly surprised if we did it. But I trust Leia’s instincts.”

“Ugh, fine. Me too, by the way. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t rather be doing something. Seems foolish to waste a night with all of us crammed in here when we could be out planning for contingencies. There aren’t even enough beds.”

“Looks like a few people might have to share,” Cassian says with faux seriousness that makes Jyn laugh. Cassian’s face softens a bit, and she stops, feeling a little flustered by the close scrutiny.

“What is it?” she asks.

“Just…you are in such a good mood.”

“Like you said, it’s a tiny space, and you’re very close. Can you blame me for it?” Jyn asks, moving a bit closer. Cassian snorts and intercepts her hand before she can reach for him.

“I’m just…glad.”

It touches on last night a bit too closely, and Jyn is nearly angry with him for not letting her brush it off the way she wants to, but she finds she can’t be. Maybe it’s the proximity to his eyes, looking down at her, still so quietly sad, or maybe she’s just _tired_. Tired of hiding, tired of holding herself at a distance.

“I’m relieved,” she tells him frankly. “I almost lost you last night.” She doesn’t think it needs to be said, but she knows that’s half the problem anyway, so she clarifies, “in more ways than one. But you’re here. Why wouldn’t I be in a good mood?”

“Dangerous mission. Stormy planet. Leia refusing to listen to anyone else and refusing to trust the ambassador enough to _sleep_ anywhere else? A hundred reasons,” Cassian answers. But he’s smiling. Jyn doesn’t want his smile to leave, so she lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

“Not to sound like some sort of sex-crazed lunatic…” at that description, Cassian nearly chokes in an effort to stifle his sudden laughter. “But if we offer to sleep in the cargo hold, and we are _very_ quiet, we can probably get away with it.”

“Well not to sound equally disgusting, but I was thinking the same thing.”

“Mm.” Jyn leans up on her toes and pecks him on the lips, satisfied. “I knew I liked you.”

* * *

The _I’m sorry_ comes later, after they’ve managed some very quiet passion in the cargo hold, nearly given up on twice when they thought they heard footsteps approaching. Even if it wasn’t freezing, their temporary bedroom is public enough that they both have to get dressed back in several layers afterward, with blankets laid out on top of them as they both settle in, sitting down against the wall in the back, behind several crates of supplies. It’s different from the usual luxury of contact, the way they encircle each other, protect each other, but at least he’s _here._

Jyn has been turning the words over in her head all night, and it’s a surprise, she thinks, that she didn’t blurt them out when he was literally inside of her, because they pounded at the back of her skull like a headache, blinding and debilitating. _I’m sorry. I’m so sorry._

_I love you_ , too, but deeper, more an essential part of herself, more a promise, than an apology.

She waits until they’re huddled close, their shoulders pressed together, her head resting against his shoulder. She waits, in part because she doesn’t want him to run once she says it, and in part because it takes her that long to work up the courage.

“I’m sorry,” she says. Blunt, less graceful than she’d hoped it would be, but it’s so unsurprising, she thinks, for it to come out this way. Growled, almost, as if she thinks it’s a demand that he’s making on her. She tempers it with, “I wanted to say it all day. But I…I didn’t think it was the right time.”

“And it’s the right time now?” he wonders. His voice is faraway, tired, and she wonders if waiting until now was a cowardly thing to do, but she can’t bring herself to care too much about that, because at least she said it.

“It’s an alright time,” she says, her voice a tad hopeful, and it makes him chuckle. He doesn’t move his arm from around her, so she takes that as permission to continue. “I didn’t realize that you’d noticed anything. I thought there wasn’t anything to notice.”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought I was doing an _awful_ job of pulling away,” she admits. He doesn’t answer for a bit, which worries her, but she compensates by curling closer, pressing a kiss to the warm skin of his neck. He lets out a small sigh and nudges his head against hers, clumsy and sleepy but trying to get as near to her as he can.

“It worried me,” he admits. “I thought you were going to leave.”

“I wouldn’t.” The fierceness of her words are a surprise to him, she thinks. They might also be a surprise to her. And she stammers over the next part, feeling her face heating up in a flush. “I mean…I know why you might have thought that. And I’m so sorry for it, Cassian. I wish I was less…I wish I could…”

“You’re here,” Cassian assures her. “Last night was, it was _terrifying_ , but at least now I know. At least now I’m not wondering if you’ll be gone. And if you are gone, at least I’ll understand why.”

“I won’t be. I won’t be gone. I promise. If I ever leave, if something ever happens, I’ll tell you. I won’t just disappear.”

“Mm. Thank you. That helps.”

“It’ll get easier.”

“You say that like you have any idea,” he says with a quiet sigh. “But Chirrut was right: neither of us do, do we?”

“I definitely don’t,” she admits. “Sometimes you seem like you do.”

“I’m just good at pretending.”

She laughs a bit at that, and she feels herself fading quickly to sleep. She’s still afraid, but her fears are less specific, less threatening, less _inevitable_ than they were. They’re quiet, prodding reminders that she hasn’t ever been enough for somebody. She hasn’t ever meant this much to another person, and another person hasn’t ever meant this much to her. If this goes wrong, if he leaves, she’s not sure what she will look like once she’s recovered from that. She won’t be the same person. She doesn’t think she possibly could be. But her fears are spoken now, and he knows of them, and he has told her that they’re wrong. Even if they aren’t, even if it happens, even if one day he realizes that he can’t love her the way he thought he could, at least she’ll know now that they both _tried_.

* * *

The storm rages for the rest of the night. The ambassador sends three separate people to ask if Leia is sure she wouldn’t rather spend the night in the palace. Which, of course, only makes her more certain that staying in the shuttle is the right decision. But it’s difficult for everyone to stay comfortable, with the wind rocking the ship and the rain pelting the metal sides incessantly, loud enough to make deep sleep near-impossible. They’re up throughout the night, trudging to the refresher and back, whispering to each other in greeting and then retreating back to wherever they’ve chosen to spend the night, commenting on the weather, on the rain, on what it must be like for the city below, the sloped streets designed to accommodate the rainy seasons but still looking utterly drenched, flooded, empty even during the day.

Three stories up on one of the landing pads, connected to the palace by a sturdy series of ornate bridges that lead on one side to the palace and the other down to the city streets, there’s a certain coziness to their situation. The landing pad is walled in on three sides, well-lit throughout the night to give K-2SO a constant view of their surroundings, and the three walls are even well-decorated with beautiful murals that Luke can’t stop complimenting. It doesn’t feel as precarious as it should, despite the weather and the height. If anything, it feels safe. The open sky above them means that they can leave the planet the _instant_ they don’t feel comfortable. The bridges that leave them stranded out in midair mean that they only need to watch two lines of sight, and that they’ll have advance warning if anyone tries to storm them. It’s a perfect situation, and still it’s somehow terrible.

Leia doesn’t bother trying to sleep. She wanders the shuttle, sits with Bodhi and K-2SO in the cockpit for a while, listens to their banter about some sort of technical issue that she doesn’t understand. But then Bodhi falls asleep in the pilot’s seat, and Leia drapes a blanket over him, and K-2SO doesn’t want to wake him by talking, and she moves on.

Chirrut and Baze are asleep in separate bunks in the crew quarters, the beds too narrow to accommodate both of them at once, although Chirrut sleeps with one hand dangling down towards his partner, and Baze sleeps with his head close to the edge of his bed, his face turned upward, as if he needs to be able to open his eyes and see some part of Chirrut at all times. Luke is across the room in one of the other bunks, curled in on himself, still shivering under several blankets and what looks like one of Chirrut’s robes. Leia pulls one of the blankets from her unused bunk above his, brushing his hair back from his face, giving in to a tender, almost maternal impulse.

No noise is generated from inside the ship, which balances eerily against the loud lashing of the rain and wind outside. Leia feels like a trespasser as she crosses the main hold and enters the cargo bay. The door has been left open, and she pokes her head inside, expecting to see Cassian as awake as she is, probably with a datapad in his lap, scrutinizing some aspect of their plan she hadn’t even thought to worry about. But it takes her a moment, because there’s no dim datapad light, and she nearly misses the small huddled shapes in the corner.

Cassian and Jyn are propped up against the wall as if they sat down for a chat and then promptly fell asleep. Cassian is upright, his head tipped back, his mouth slightly open. He has always seemed so much older than Leia, but she sees now a man who isn’t even thirty, who is younger than Han, who bears the responsibility of men twice his age with a grace that makes it seemed earned rather than unfairly thrust upon him since childhood.

Jyn, a fierce scowl on her doll-like face, has her head in Cassian’s lap, her hands in fists in the blanket that has been tucked around their legs. One of Cassian’s hands is threaded through her hair, which is unbound for once, inky and smooth in the darkness. Cassian’s posture is entirely relaxed but for his hands where they touch her, where he becomes protective. Tense. His other hand is beneath her head, like an offered pillow to rest on.

Something aches inside of Leia, some sudden realization.

Envy, she realizes. Not for any one of them (though she will admit a long ago girlish crush on a years-younger Cassian Andor, who seemed so impossibly experienced when he was assigned to the Organas on Alderaan), but for the comfort itself. For the ability to find oneself in that position and fall asleep. Protected. Protecting. Needful. To be able to let down your guard enough to pull someone so close to your heart.

How has Cassian managed it? How has _Jyn_? Leia would have said that they were likely to orbit around each other for eternity without either one making a move, but here they are. Worried and fragile, according to Chirrut, but still with the kind of trust that lets them be this vulnerable with each other.

Every time Han threatens to leave, she...

_No. Don’t think about Han._

(Every time Han threatens to leave she’s sure it’s the end of whatever she feels for him, never trusts that he has any reason to stay beyond the future promise of reward).

She sees how hard Cassian holds her, and how without gripping him with her fingers, Jyn still seems to hold onto him with every muscle in every inch of her body that touches his. In that, she can see how much they love each other. And there’s a difference between knowing it, believing it, and _seeing_ it, really understanding it.

After having seen it like this, she knows that she won’t be able to stop.

(and tomorrow, when she sees Cassian Andor lying on the sodden ground, when she sees the soft green jacket that she picked out for he and Jyn to wear stained with his blood, stained with mud, ruined beyond repair just like the man, she will hurt all the more for having to wrap her arm around Jyn’s waist and pull her away. Clawing, sobbing, lost).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone still reading and commenting! I'm trying to burn through this as quickly as possible because I've got a BIG life responsibility approaching late next week, and I hope to have the series polished off by then, including the finale.


	5. Jyn, Get Out of There

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After editing this chapter three times today, I am SORT OF satisfied with it, and I am VERY tired. Although fair warning I think this also counts as a cliffhanger? Although it occurs to me that I really don't know what counts as a cliffhanger. This definitely delineates two separate parts to this mission, so it's a really good place to end, but I apologize if it stresses any of you out!

“Something’s wrong,” Baze says. It’s not like him to interject his opinions into a mission like this, so it carries more weight than it would have if it had been spoken by anyone else. Chirrut has been frowning at the table in this pointlessly plush meeting room for the past thirty minutes, and Bodhi is visibly trembling with the effort to look slightly less scared than he is, and Jyn’s grip on the back of Leia’s chair is white-knuckled, tense. Even Luke seems to have picked up on the mood, and he’s unusually silent, pale, watching everyone else carefully, trying to read them. Cassian, though, remains calm. Or at least as calm as he ever gets.

Ambassador Metit is late, and that’s worrying. That speaks of a problem that might see this mission classified as a failure once it’s over. Assassinated by anarchists, perhaps. Or outplayed by the governor already. Cassian knows that Metit needs this alliance more desperately than the Alliance needs it, and he seems like a smart enough man to know that a ploy of intentional lateness would be pointlessly insulting, so he’s reasonably certain that something has gone wrong.

But this mission was always going to be a difficult one. And Cassian has always been an over-preparer. He trusts Leia’s instincts. Believes in Leia’s leadership. A lack of faith isn’t what this is about. It’s about him, about his need to control a situation so thoroughly that there are avenues for escape at every turn. Jyn would likely scoff and roll her eyes at him if she knew (but it would be soft, approving, glad. Because if anyone can appreciate additional escape routes, it’s her). Leia would probably be furious. But if everything goes well? If Leia’s right, and their plan is a solid one, and Metit turns out to be an upstanding ally? Leia won’t ever have to know.

Cassian can stay calm because Cassian can remind himself of the facts: K-2SO is currently securing an alternate ship for the team, Cassian has put out some feelers with some contacts he has in the area to get them clearance for a potential hasty exit, and he has sent one of those contacts to investigate the situation in Lower Mair, where the anarchists are rumored to have their stronghold. If they have to flee, if this all goes wrong, they will have options.

“I don’t like this,” Leia admits. She turns over her shoulder to look at Cassian, who has been leaning back against the wall behind her chair for the past ten minutes, eyes narrowed patiently.

“It doesn’t seem encouraging,” he agrees. His tone is intentionally blank, languid, revealing nothing. Leia’s expression is searching. She wants advice. She wants a new direction. She probably suspects him of doing exactly what he _has_ been doing. “We should contact the anarchists.”

“What would be the point?”

The question sounds a bit disdainful, but Cassian knows she’s just worried and trying to pretend she isn’t.

“See what their plans are. If they are planning to make a move on Metit. See if they _already_ made a move. I could be wrong. Might be Imperial intervention, not anarchist. But I don’t think I am.”

“I don’t think you are, either,” Chirrut puts in quietly, still frowning. “It’s…difficult to say. But there is something harsh about today. I fear we are in danger the longer we wait here.”

“The anarchists might be more proactive than we thought,” Cassian suggests. “Maybe they have designs on the palace.”

“The palace,” Leia says, firm and blank and clearly furious.

“The ambassador isn’t _that_ late, is he?” Luke wonders.

“It’s a civil war,” Cassian says to Leia, ignoring Luke. “If they want to make a move, they will make a move whether or not we are involved. It would be best to get ahead of it. If they think we are only coming to them because we have no choice, they will have leverage, especially if they think they can win.”

“ _Can_ they win?” Jyn wonders, and Cassian narrows his eyes further, not wanting to answer. He knows that Jyn suffered with the Partisans. Knows of her loneliness and confusion, knows that she never felt quite right about the level of sacrifice that Saw seemed to demand from his people, but she has a connection to scrappy, disorganized fighting forces all the same. It was her whole childhood. Of course she does. Still. She doesn’t ask questions if she doesn’t want answers, and she doesn’t ask for lies.

“Not in my opinion,” he admits, and Jyn sighs, nods, like that was what she expected to hear. “They are too disorganized, and they seem to forget they are being watched.” His hand gestures vaguely upwards, to the Star Destroyers above the planet. “Whatever foothold they get, the Empire will take it away. If they win even the slightest battle here, the Empire will use it as an excuse to tighten their hold on the planet, cut back on the government’s power, cut back on freedoms. They think that’s what they want. They think that enough people resisting will turn the tide. But this isn’t Kopha, this isn’t a small outpost. The Imperial presence here is too large for all-out warfare.”

“Then why approach the anarchists at all? If they’re just pointless?” Bodhi asks, dismayed suddenly, like he was happier back when he had no idea what they were even doing here.

“We would never have offered to help them win this war,” Leia says, practically scoffing at him, though again it’s tempered by her fondness for the pilot. “We would have given them a different outlet. This? This fucking war is pointless posturing on both sides. The government pushing, the anarchists pushing back. Waste of resources and good fighters on both sides.”

“This is also why it was easier to win over the government,” Cassian points out, taking pity on Bodhi’s still-confused expression. “They demanded a way to keep the Empire at bay without engaging them in fighting. The anarchists would have required more. Ships. Open assistance. Not so easy to provide. Still valuable, if we have no other choice.”

Leia realizes that he has somewhat skillfully shifted the conversation back over to the matter at hand, and she shrugs uncomfortably.

“This late in the game…” she starts. “And if they _are_ going to attack, it won’t look good. The Rebellion partnering up with them mid-coup.”

“We might not have a choice. I can frame it like we are just…curious. To see what their plans are.”

“The deeply suspicious anarchists? You’re right. They’ll probably believe you,” Leia says dryly. Cassian shrugs. Thinks of the ship K-2SO is probably bartering for at this very moment in the marketplace. Feels a little better about once again losing an argument with Leia.

“We can wait, if you think it would be better,” he says, and Leia’s eyes go about as narrow as his.

“You’re already planning something, aren’t you? You _fuck_.”

“Leia,” Luke says, startled.

“Can you blame him? This is clearly going sideways,” Jyn says. She sounds disinterested by the conversation, but Cassian can see the defensive bunching of her muscles. She’s going to say something about the assassination he performed, about Leia asking too much of him, Cassian’s almost certain. But she somehow swallows the urge, keeps the words inside.

“We don’t know that yet,” Leia says.

“Look at him,” Jyn hisses, gesturing to Chirrut.

“I cannot give you every answer,” Chirrut says, knowing that he is the _him_ to which she has referred. “Though you are right: this is falling apart. But I think we’re about to meet someone who can help.”

The door slides open, and Leia rises from her chair, impatient. It isn’t Metit who enters, but an aide, and Cassian is already mentally running through their next steps. The young woman scurries in, looking about as frightened as Bodhi. Now, Cassian allows himself to feel the alarm. Her face is open, not bothering to hide anything. Yes, something has gone very wrong.

“I’m very sorry to be doing this. Princess, esteemed guests. There has been an attack of Ambassador Metit’s convoy, only a few blocks from the palace.”

“Attacked? Is he dead?” Leia asks. That’s more blunt than is probably proper, but the young woman doesn’t seem to notice.

“No, your highness. Last reports are that his bodyguards are holding off the fighters, but they won’t last much longer, and then there will be trouble. Maybe the fighting won’t reach here, but that can’t be depended on. I’ve been sent to make sure you get safely back to your ship to allow you time to escape before we begin the full evacuation of non-essential personnel. You need to leave. You need to leave _now_.”

Certainly not the right way to talk to a princess, even the princess of a dead planet, but the young woman doesn’t seem to know what else to say, and Cassian sympathizes. He glances at Leia and finds her looking back at him, looking for his reaction.

“Let’s go,” he says, and she nods.

* * *

They’re allowed to leave on their own, without being chaperoned by the aide, who hurries off to do whatever else needs doing. Once they’re outside, on the third floor veranda, following the path to their landing pad, they can hear the sounds of alarms towards the poorer areas of the city: the Lower Mair, the business centers, apartment blocks. On the other side of the palace are the wealthier neighborhoods, the high-end markets and the noble houses. Guarded for now, safe behind their high walls and guarded checkpoints, but Cassian has seen far more secure places fall easily under sustained attack.

He can hear distant sounds of fighting, when the sound of the storm abates enough to permit it. They sound far off, but that might be down to the wind, so he doesn’t waste any time. He leads the way with his hand twitching near his blaster, Jyn by his side, both of them with sharp eyes and a silent readiness to do whatever they need to.

“We can’t leave, obviously,” Leia says, picking up her skirts to run faster, looking over her shoulder to make sure that none of Metit’s people are following. “We need that prick. We can’t let this opportunity go to waste.”

“What, so we’re supposed to go _find_ him in this?” Luke asks incredulously. “What if he’s already dead?”

“Then we reach out, align with the anarchists before it’s too late.”

Cassian wants to point out that it seems like it’s _already_ too late, but Luke isn’t finished.

“That simple, huh? Doesn’t matter _which_ side we choose as long as we get the support?”

“How is there a question at the end of that sentence, Luke? That should be obvious!”

“ _You_ need to get back to the ship,” Cassian says, cutting off Luke before the Jedi says something he’ll regret. He draws the group up short as they reach the end of the roof, the branch in the path just a few yards ahead: the gate to the right will lead them to the interconnected landing pads, and keeping straight will lead them to a staircase that will take them down to the palace entrance. He pulls up the hood of his green jacket, looking distastefully out into the rain. “We can’t risk you being caught. They will be looking for hostages. For negotiations, or maybe just to make an example of. Either way, you need to be protected. Luke, the Guardians, and I will get the ambassador. Bodhi, contact K2. He’s securing us another ship in the upper market. They’re probably gearing up for the evacuation now, but it will be safe from the fighting. Just show them your credentials and the guards will let you into the marketplace docks. You will help him prepare it.”

“Why do we need another ship?” Bodhi asks.

“Because _that_ one has been sitting in the palace docks for two days. If we take off in that thing, there’s no guarantee the Empire won’t know we’re on it, and the anarchists might target it. Jyn, you need to take Leia back to the ship. Wait until Bodhi gives you the okay to transfer to the new one, and then take her there. If we still need you, I’ll update you with our location, and you’ll head to us.”

Jyn looks like she’s about to argue, but she swallows it, obviously hearing the sense in the plan even if it leaves her on the sidelines. She gives him a short, tight smile, and a squeeze of the hand before they’re moving into action.

Leia hesitates, grabs Cassian’s arm as the groups split off into two.

“Take care of him,” she says, quietly, so Luke can’t hear. Cassian nods.

“I will. Take care of yourself.”

“Make sure Jyn doesn’t do anything reckless, you mean.”

“I would never expect that of _anyone_ , but an effort would be appreciated.”

* * *

Jyn leads the way back to the shuttle at a dead run, Bodhi right behind her. Leia trails them, having more difficulty in the long dress, especially as it soaks up the rain, and Jyn and Bodhi wait for her as they show their credentials to the guards at the entrance to their bridge. The guards are nervy, brusque, but they seem to have been expecting them, and they wave the group through, locking the gate behind them. The bridge ahead of them is empty. The only guards will be at the other end, at the staircase to the street.

Knowing that, Jyn draws her blaster, her eyes scanning the buildings around them. The sounds of fighting are still a long way off, but the echoing quality to them and the constant fucking hurricane make it difficult to tell exactly how close they are. The bridge is so exposed, the stone railings coming up only waist height. And the visibility is _terrible_.

Despite her worry, the worst thing that happens is that they’re newly soaked in moments by the torrent of rain. The ship is unmolested, no one tries to snipe them as they travel to the relative safety of the landing pad, and the cargo bay doors open easily when Bodhi punches in the code.

Once they’re inside, Bodhi slips out of the fine coat he was wearing for the negotiations, throwing on a waterproof poncho and grabbing his bag.

“I’ll let you know when K and I are ready with the ship,” he says, breezing back toward the exit, checking his comlink briefly with hands that tremble.

“You’re forgetting something,” Jyn says, and she takes the kyber necklace from around her neck. Bodhi grins, shy suddenly, and ducks his head so she can drape it over his head. When it’s settled, Jyn presses it over his heart and pats his chest. Leia can tell that she’s more worried about him than she’ll let on, can see the way her smile trembles just a bit. But Jyn doesn’t tell him to be careful, doesn’t tell him that she’s worried. Leia doesn’t say it either, but she _is_. Bodhi is the type of man you can’t help but worry about, and they’re letting him run off into this storm and civil war, and she’s supposed to sit here in this fucking ship? Not likely.

When Bodhi’s gone, Leia practically rips her dress off and stalks, dressed only in her underclothes, towards her bag in the crew quarters.

“This is obviously a very stupid plan,” she says.

“What, Cassian’s? Or the one you’re about to drag me into?” Jyn asks, but even as she speaks, she’s shrugging out of her disguise, reaching for her utility belt, looking curiously at Leia through wet strands of hair that fall into her eyes.

“Yes,” Leia replies, after pretending to consider her options before speaking, and Jyn lets out a huff of a laugh that sounds, to Leia, a lot like Cassian’s. “Got anything for me? All I’ve got are dresses.”

Jyn unzips her bag and throws Leia her extra pair of pants and an extra shirt. Luckily for them both, they’re roughly the same size.

“Take Cassian’s jacket. No hood, but you can use this scarf.” She tosses Leia a worn green scarf and points vaguely in the direction of Cassian’s things.

“You’re sure he won’t mind?”

“Mind? He’s going to kill us anyway,” Jyn says with an incredulous laugh.

“He can try. If he tries to give you shit for it, just point out that you were following my orders.”

“Yeah, _that_? Will definitely not impress him. Besides, I don’t think we officially work for you anymore, princess.”

Leia chuckles at that, continues getting dressed. Jyn should know better than to think that’s the end of it, though. This is _Leia_.

“Is that why the two of you are having problems?” she asks.

The look of betrayal that Jyn shoots her is almost funny, though Leia isn’t laughing. Actually, she’s sorry as soon as she asks the question, but she isn’t the type of person to back down from a course once she’s on it, so she just stands a little taller and looks at Jyn steadily.

“Why would you say that?” Jyn asks. She’s shrewd, in some ways. Probably wouldn’t make a good politician, because even her shrewdest moments come clouded with brutality, like she’s ready to throw down as soon as she needs to. But she’s good at being closed off, at being blank, aside from a simmer of violence beneath everything. Leia has always found her utterly fascinating, and the adrenaline of the moment is making her even more aware of just how much _life_ is in Jyn Erso, and how much of it she keeps locked away, hidden.

She wonders what Jyn is like in her private moments with Cassian. What kind of person is she? Does she smile more with him? Does she laugh? Or has Cassian been won over by the brutality itself?

“If you’re asking how I _know_ ,” Leia begins gently. “I overheard some of your crewmates worrying about it. And I wouldn’t need them to tell me there’s tension. That’s the thing about dealing with the Council, Jyn. You learn to recognize what a polite smile looks like, and you learn to recognize what’s under it.”

“I’m not one for polite smiles,” Jyn points out, scowling deeply, as if to prove her point.

“No. You have your own tells.”

Jyn accepts that. As much as she plays at irreverent and unimpressed, Leia can tell that she buys into the mystique of _Princess Leia_ at least a little. She accepts Leia’s cryptic bluff without challenge. Or maybe she’s just used to Chirrut saying the same sorts of things. Used to the idea that someone can see past her defenses without much effort.

“As I learned last night, sometimes talking about things isn’t the best strategy,” she says, zipping her green hooded coat back over her dry clothes. “So why don’t we not open this door, yeah?”

“No, leave that here. We don’t want to risk being recognized. And what do you mean?”

“If you seriously think we’re going to have this conversation _now_ , you’ve lost it,” Jyn mutters. She tosses her jacket to the floor with a measure of violence, barely contained rage, and takes her only other one, a ratty black number with a too-small hood. “Bad enough we’re doing _this_.”

“You could always say no. Tell me to sit my ass down and stay here,” Leia points out. Still prodding, still poking at Jyn’s defenses, like she’s trying to figure out what will take her apart. She doesn’t think that’s what she’s doing. She doesn’t think it’s all fascination. All experimentation. Part of her _wants_ the confrontation that Jyn is withholding from her. She wants to understand exactly what the anger is about.

“I could say no, could I? Like _Cassian_ could have when Draven and Mon Mothma cornered him into an assassination he wanted no part of?”

“Exactly like that,” Leia replies. Her voice is steel. Calm. Pointed. They both know that Cassian could have refused it. But only Jyn knows why he didn’t, and Leia can tell that it bothers her.

Jyn looks momentarily incredulous at the boldness of Leia’s retort, before her expression smooths over into nothingness again. Leia wonders if she knows how much better at that she’s gotten, the longer she’s known Cassian.

“But you’ll be going out there whether or not I follow,” Jyn says. Leia shrugs, somewhat cheekily, though she knows Jyn isn’t in the mood to appreciate that. “Then I’m going with you.”

“Good. Try to keep up, will you? This’ll be fun.”

“Fun.”

“Sneaking around behind Cassian’s back to solve a diplomatic emergency? Why, what do _you_ do for fun?”

“Sabacc or sex, mostly,” Jyn deadpans, but when Leia leaves the ship, Jyn follows.

* * *

Cassian thought that Eadu was the most miserably rainy place he would ever visit. Perhaps ‘hoped’ is a better word. He is a practical man, and so he understands the benefit of planets like Aeron, with protracted rainy seasons over most of the surface. He has spent too much time in deserts to not be grateful for a place that rains so much you could just drink from the air.

But Aeron is a terrible place to be caught up in a civil war battle. The wind is deafening, drawing every sound away from its location of origin and putting sniper fire on every corner, impossible to pin down. There could be three fighters out here. There could be three _hundred_. He and his group keep moving, stick to cover, are drenched through their meagre rain equipment within moments. Conversation is next to impossible, their comlinks will probably be spotty at best once they need to use them, and it’s hard to focus on anything.

They pass groups of government soldiers, most of them settling in to prevent any forward momentum from the anarchists, but the soldiers seem to understand what the little rescue party is up to, and they’re waved through every checkpoint with few questions. Cassian hopes these guards are feeling just as magnanimous on the return journey. Luckily, his group are all still wearing their now-ruined diplomatic finery, giving them an air of something official, sanctioned. A bit waterlogged, but they’re so _obviously_ not anarchists that he allows himself to hope. All they need to do is get the ambassador, and they should be all right.

It’s when they’re almost to the location of the ambush that he realizes his mistake: Chirrut is unnaturally unbalanced, his movements uncertain, faltering. He leans often on Baze for support, relying on his partner to keep him moving steady. It isn’t often that Cassian feels like he’s fighting alongside a blind man, but he’s reminded of it now, watching Chirrut try to navigate an arena that assaults his remaining senses, overriding the years of careful training he’s had to do to compensate for his lack of sight.

Knowing already that it’s pointless to keep going like this, cursing his own lack of foresight, Cassian herds his group into some paltry cover afforded by a restaurant that looks like it’s been closed for months. It’s not much, an awning above them that’s sodden and drips water through in patches, but it’s enough to catch their bearings.

“This is ridiculous,” he complains, wringing out his jacket and trying pointlessly to find some dry spot beneath his top layers on which to dry his hands enough to feel safe touching his comlink. “We’re changing tactics.”

“Captain...” Chirrut starts, apologetic already, knowing what’s coming.

“It’s my fault, Chirrut. I didn’t realize.” Though with the echoing between the buildings and the constant wind, he _should_ have. Another thing to feel guilty for. “You and Baze head back to the ship. Send Jyn once you can, and you can take over on protecting Leia. I’ll activate my tracker so she can find me. Here.” He hands Baze the link-up, and Baze nods gravely, fingers closing around the small device, storing it in some interior pocket where it has a hope of staying dry. Cassian hates to ask Jyn to travel through this rain alone, but they don’t have time to waste. Leaving all of his team behind while he takes on dangerous things himself may be his preferred method, but he knows Jyn would be furious if he did it now.

Trust. Showing that he believes in her. It isn’t as if he thinks there’s one thing he can do that will fix the discomfort between he and Jyn, but hopefully small steps will start to close the gap.

Baze and Chirrut disappear back out into the storm, leaving Cassian and Luke still huddled beneath the awning.

“We should keep moving,” Luke reminds him, incredibly passionate, though he seems as reluctant to leave even this negligible cover as Cassian is. “We can’t let the ambassador die.”

Cassian manages not to give him a completely incredulous look. The ambassador dying would be, at worst, somewhat inconvenient. Cassian understands that Luke isn’t quite like he and Leia, but surely he must see it. Surely he must understand that Ambassador Metit’s threats to turn Leia over to the Empire were not idle political conversations. Surely he must understand that this civil war is not the same as the Rebellion versus the Empire, that there is no good or evil here, that this is entirely different from the fight that the rest of them have devoted their lives to. Just because there are two sides to a thing, it doesn’t mean that the two sides are parallel to any other sets of two sides. Ambassador Metit is not a good man caught in a difficult situation. He is a bad man who thrust himself closer to power with every deceitful act until he was dangerously balanced between three forces and reached out to the Alliance because it would be convenient, because it would help him keep his power, because he wanted _more._

But maybe that doesn’t matter to Luke. Maybe the truth of it _can’t_ matter. Maybe he needs to find morality in this, needs to believe that Leia chose Metit’s side because of some goodness, something that deserved their help.

It isn’t true. Leia chose the Aeronian government because they had a better chance of being able to slip past the Empire. She chose the government because their demands were easier to meet. Leia chose Ambassador Metit because he was a man who had no problem with the complicated political maneuverings that blackmailing an Imperial governor came with. There was no goodness. No morality in the decision.

Luke is perhaps a bit too innocent for this Rebellion, but Cassian isn’t going to be the one to shatter him. He still hasn’t quite forgiven himself for the look on Bodhi’s face after Eadu. That betrayed understanding that said: _you used me to point Galen out. You were going to use me to kill him._

“Right,” he says instead. “We’ll get him.” He has managed to dry off his hands enough to touch his comlink, though his fingers still slip on it. “Jyn? Are you at the ship yet?”

* * *

Jyn, very much _not_ in the ship, pulls Leia by the arm into an alcove formed by the juncture of two differently-shaped buildings as the princess shoots her a panicked look. The question rings in both their ears, and Cassian’s voice sounds strained. It’s impossible not to worry.

“Yes, of course we are,” Jyn replies, sort of convincingly. “Are you okay?”

“We’re fine. Can barely make you out.”

The wind is buffeting around her, surely audible on her comlink when she speaks, so she says, “we’ve got the cargo bay doors open. The storm’s getting worse.”

“I know,” comes Cassian’s voice, apparently convinced. “You should shut the doors. No point in keeping them open for us. I’ll call you when we’re close.” Leia gives her a look that speaks of amused relief to have gotten away with it. Jyn feels, for a moment, like a teenager again. Sneaking around Saw’s rules with some of the other Partisans. Drinking, or maybe just playing a game. Things Saw never approved of for any of his people, but especially not Jyn. She isn’t quite as friendly with Leia as all that, but then again, she was never quite friendly with the Partisans, either. “Listen, Chirrut and Baze are heading back now. I’m not sure how long it will take them. Hopefully we’ll have Metit by then and you won’t need to follow, but if not, they’ll take your place guarding Leia. Baze has a tracker so you can find me.”

Now the exchanged look between Jyn and Leia is both disappointed and alarmed, like children caught out after bed.

“Thought you said everything was fine.”

“Chirrut is having trouble hearing. It’s throwing him off. It’s too dangerous to have him in a fight like this.”

“All right. I’ll be waiting,” Jyn says. She looks back at Leia, heaving a sigh. “Well. No arguing with that. Let’s go back.”

“And to think, I was _almost_ allowed to have some fun,” Leia quips.

“Jyn, we’re getting ready to move,” Cassian continues. “Be careful when you’re coming to us. We haven’t met with any resistance, so you should be all right, but it’s…difficult.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Jyn replies. “Watch your back until I can get there and cover it for you, all right?”

“Be safe,” Cassian replies. As always, it sounds like an order.

Jyn leads the way back out into the street, her hair plastered to her face where it has fallen out of her bun. They didn’t even _get_ very far. It’s only about a block from the staircase that will lead them up to the landing pad. Leia’s desire to help may have been misguided, and Jyn may still be rankled a bit by their earlier conversation, but Jyn had almost been looking forward to their adventure. Besides, Jyn has to sympathize with the desire to help, with the desire to be useful, not locked away somewhere safe.

Maybe she’ll try to see if she can get Baze and Chirrut to let her take Leia with her, but that seems like a pretty far-fetched hope. They like bending the rules more than anyone, but they also put a premium on safety. It’s a tough call. Maybe if she frames it right…

She’s lost in thought as they trudge back up the stairs, and she nearly steps back out onto the bridge before she realizes that the gate is open.

The gate is open, and there are no guards.

They were here only minutes ago, when Leia talked her way past them, charming and witty and fierce enough that they didn’t ask too many questions. One of them had nudged the other, shrugged, grinning, unconcerned. It had seemed innocent enough at the time, but now Jyn wonders. Did they use Leia and Jyn’s departure as an excuse to abandon their post? She doesn’t quite have Chirrut’s instincts, but she has _something_ like it after years of being on the run, of reading situations that escalate too rapidly to think through. She can’t be _sure_ , of course. That’s not how these things work. But she can’t just dismiss it. Nudge, smile, shrug. A combination of gestures that could have had a dozen meanings behind them. _What does it matter?_ Or _that might be a good thing_. Or _let them go. We have our own job to do._

Instinct? Or paranoia instilled in her by Saw?

Just as she stops, one foot still down on the top stair, the other on the stone of the bridge, she sees movement near the ship.

It’s one of those things that’s not necessarily an automatic disaster. It could be someone else evacuating. There are at least five landing pads connected to theirs, five separate bridges and staircases all connected into an intricate network of artistically designed places for the palace visitors to park their ships. Surely the evacuation has started now, or there were visitors similarly sent to their ships to wait to see whether the fighting would reach the palace. Maybe some of them are trying to get answers, trying to look for others in the same situation. Or maybe Bodhi forgot something, is back early, maybe with K-2SO. Maybe Baze and Chirrut _sprinted_ back here, made impossibly good time. Maybe the guards just fucking like _ships_ and want to get a closer look! It could be anything, but still. _Still_. Her entire body quivers with certainty, with alarm: something is wrong.

Before she has time to talk herself out of it, her arm slams out, fingers wrapping around the railing, keeping Leia from walking around her.

Another second of self-doubt, quickly squashed. She grabs Leia’s hand and pulls her to duck down against the staircase, mostly hidden from view. To her credit, Leia doesn’t fight her, doesn’t ask any questions. Jyn tries to get a good look at the figures that move around, in and out of focus as the rain and the wind continues to batter the air around them.

“Cassian,” she says into her comlink. “Cassian, there are people outside the ship.”

* * *

While Jyn and Leia were making their way back to the ship, feeling slightly cheated out of having any fun, Cassian and Luke were finishing off what remained of the anarchists sent to intercept Ambassador Metit’s convoy. The man himself, huddled inside his overturned, sabotaged transport, surrounded by the bodies of his bodyguards, is equal parts grateful and grating, insisting that they’re moving too slowly, that they have to get back to the palace, that they have to take the long way back to avoid his usual route.

He refuses to let them slow down to help one of his wounded bodyguards. He consents, with dickish incredulity, to leaving the man a blaster and calling it in to the government forces nearby, alerting them to the location of the wounded man. He then spends several minutes trying to gather anything of personal value out of the transport, including an apparently expensive datapad and some jewelry.

Cassian isn’t petty. Not really. Still, he pays special attention to Luke’s reaction, making sure that Luke takes it all in, making sure that Luke understands. Ambassador Metit is not a good man. Ambassador Metit has very quickly become a real pain in the ass, but he’s also the kind of man who leaves a faithful bodyguard behind but thinks it’s okay to take the time to collect his garbage if he spent enough credits on it.

Okay, so maybe when Metit throws his half-destroyed coat to the ground and demands Cassian’s, Cassian makes sure that he’s making eye contact with Luke when he hands it over. A pointed sort of eye contact that makes it very obvious what he’s doing. So maybe he’s a _little_ petty.

Things have already gone to shit when Jyn calls, is the point. They’ve gone to shit, but they’re bouncing back, and it has a feeling of being almost over. All Cassian has to do is get this odious jackass back to his precious palace. There’s no need for Jyn to come after them. There’s no need for any additional fighting. Bodhi and K-2SO will get the ship ready, and then they’ll be able to take off before the anarchists make another push. A dud of a mission, surely disappointing to Leia, but at least they’ll get to go home.

So of course, she has to call. And there’s something in her voice that dashes his hopes of an easy exit. Cassian’s instincts have saved him a hell of a lot of times over the years, and he can feel them crackling now.

“Jyn, how many people?” he asks.

* * *

Jyn can hardly hear him, the sound distorted by the wind and rain and how close his mouth must be to the comlink. But she understands the message, anyway. She does a quick count of the ones she can see. There are four distinct shapes, clustered on one side of the landing pad, and she can see a few more blurrily standing in the background.

“At least six,” she says. “They have guns. I think at least some of them might be palace guards, but something doesn’t seem quite right. I’m trying to get a better look.”

* * *

Cassian, hauling the increasingly irate Metit by the hood, dragging the man down the side streets, his eyes everywhere at once, practically yells into the comlink, “do not try to talk to them, Jyn!”

* * *

Jyn laughs a little, rolls her eyes towards Leia, who returns the gesture with a half-hidden grin.

“I’m not going to _talk_ to them, Cassian. For fuck’s sake.”

“Can you take off?”

“No, I can’t. I’m not…” she looks back up at the ship again, relieved when she sees that they’re moving away. “Wait, hold on. They’re clearing the area.” More than that, she realizes. They’re running, away from she and Leia, sprinting down the bridge towards the gate that will take them to the palace veranda. Jyn stands up, pulls Leia along with her, trying to see around the bulk of the ship, around the curved walls of the landing pad. She can see glimpses of the veranda from where she stands, so she moves closer, leaning on the waist-high wall of the bridge.  

She’s squinting through the rain, bracing against the wind, but she needn’t try too hard: the blaster fire is absurdly visible. She hears shouts, return fire. An attack, then. The two guards from the staircase are definitely among the six: one of them opens the gate with his electronic key and ushers the others inside. More blaster fire. More shouting. The turrets from the veranda ceiling activate. What exactly do they think they’re going to accomplish with only six people?

She and Leia creep closer, their own blasters at the ready. Jyn’s hand is still out by her side, warning Leia to stay behind her as they inch across the bridge. Into the comlink, she remarks, “they’ve cleared out. Something’s going on here, Cassian. A few of the guards have turned on the rest and they’re having some kind of firefight. Maybe they were just regrouping by the ship?” But then she looks over, happens to catch sight of another group on one of the _other_ landing pads. A vague shape rises up from where they were crouched beside the ship. Several more join them, and they head down the bridge toward the veranda, towards another gate, swinging open.

It clicks. Slowly, yes, and later she will think ‘why didn’t I realize it right away?’ but it finally slides home. “They’re on all the landing pads,” she says, a half-formed suspicion rapidly gaining shape inside her.

* * *

Cassian’s heart stops.

He isn’t there. His instincts might not be right. He might not understand exactly what’s going on. But he’s imagining Jyn and Leia pressed against the walls in the cargo bay, peeking out the windows. He’s imagining why they would have groups on the landing pads, why they would storm the palace with so few people, why they would attempt something so foolhardy unless there was something bigger coming.

“Jyn, get out of there!” he shouts.

* * *

Jyn understands in time.

Barely in time.

She and Leia are halfway across the bridge to the shuttle when Cassian shouts the warning, but Jyn has already realized what’s going on. She turns, grabs Leia around the waist, and tackles the princess to the ground only seconds before the shuttle explodes.

Pain, white hot, scorching along her back, pressure like a physical force pressing her into the ground, pushing her into Leia, the sound _overwhelming_ , impossible to bear, loud over the sound of Leia’s scream of surprise.

* * *

The roiling clouds of smoke are visible over the tops of the buildings in front of them. Explosion after explosion, each of the landing pads at the palace erupting into flame, shuttles bursting. Cassian finds that he can no longer move his legs. Luke keeps running. Ambassador Metit keeps running. Cassian stares, mouth hanging open, finger pressed against the comlink, his words forgotten.

* * *

Her hands are tucked over her head, arms pressed up against her ears to protect them, her face smashed against the side of Leia’s, but still the explosion absorbs her, eats her up, and for a few seconds, she thinks she must be dead. She _must_ be dead.

But the inferno ends, the sound dissipates, the shock reverberates through her and then away, dispelled by the wind and the rain.

* * *

“Jyn?” he shouts, finding his legs again, finding his voice, following the now-distant figures in front of him. “ _Jyn_ , answer me!”

* * *

And she _hurts_ , the sting of the rain against her burned back heavy, painful, but she’s alive. She’s alive. She’s _alive_.

“Are you okay?” she asks Leia, pushing herself up onto trembling hands and knees. Her voice is hoarse from a scream she doesn’t remember, and Leia slides out from under her, gripping her by the arm, turning her around immediately to see the damage.

Blistering spikes of feeling as Leia pats out a fire that must have still been clinging to her now-ruined raincoat.

“You’re okay. You’re fine,” Leia says. It’s so _obviously_ a lie.

Any thoughts of demanding the truth of it disappear in an instant as the blaster shots ring out from one of the other bridges. They’ve been spotted. Red lasers strike the bridge, sending chips of stone flying. Jyn can barely hear the shots, ears still ringing with the force of the explosion, but she can see them well enough. She pushes Leia to her feet, pushes her back towards the stairs, back towards the city, back the way they came.

* * *

“Jyn!” he begs into the comlink, something snapping in his chest, clenching around the home she’s made inside his heart. Luke is shooting up at someone on the roof, shoving Metit into some paltry cover, yelling at Cassian to get out of the middle of the road, but Cassian _can’t_.

* * *

Jyn’s comlink doesn’t make a sound. She doesn’t hear Cassian’s voice, doesn’t hear Bodhi asking about the noise. Doesn’t hear Baze whispering, as much as Baze can whisper, that they’re being taken into the palace to be locked down, doesn’t hear him asking for orders.

Across the city, similar questions go unanswered. Datapads lose network connection. Frantic calls for updates are seemingly ignored by the people who need to give them. The anarchists on the roof of their temporary headquarters have heeded the signal: the explosions, visible from their vantage point, are followed almost immediately by the flip of a switch. A total communications shutdown.  Across the city, the fighters prepare while the government forces begin to panic, while the Empire circles the planet in their impassive, unbeatable ships, as yet unaware of the danger below. Any anarchist strike has to be quick. Has to be lethal. Has to be enough to overpower the government before the Empire has a chance to realize what’s going on. En masse, they move towards the palace to take what they can before they’re stopped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone reading and commenting! I wish I could tell you how many chapters are left, but I have no idea. The word count is up to 58k now, so WHO KNOWS?!


	6. I Don't Hate You. I Hate all of it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I bent over backwards to end this chapter on kind of a hopeful note lmao. No cliffhangers this time! (right? please tell me this isn't a cliffhanger. actually, don't tell me if it is. I'm Bodhi right now. I'd rather not know)

Leia knows her way around a blaster, is a better shot than half the bodyguards they try to stick her with, and she never hesitates when she has to fire. She’s also no stranger to running from things, to hearing the whine and thud of impact against some nearby surface as she narrowly avoids taking a blaster shot to the back. She’s even gotten used to the odd explosion! But this? All of this? She’s been used as an asset, an intelligence agent, her hands mostly kept clean by necessity. She’s a diplomat, for fuck’s sake!

She’ll handle it. She’s _determined_ to handle it. But it’s horrifying. The fire roaring around her ears isn’t going to leave her for a very long time. Neither is the way Jyn tackled her, taking the brunt of the damage. Damage which Leia still isn’t even sure of the extent of, because they didn’t have more than a second to recover before they had to start running again.

She caught a glimpse of Jyn’s blistered injuries, the skin red, the coat falling away in patches in some places, fabric burned into Jyn’s skin in others, but Jyn quickly pushed Leia in front of her, the two women charging down the stairs and back into the city streets.

Jyn _seems_ fine, holding herself together, firing with astounding accuracy up at their pursuers, keeping most of them trapped on the bridge while a few idiots try to follow. But Leia’s no stranger to the disarmingly heady rush of adrenaline after an injury. She knows better than to trust it, even as she’s forced to _rely_ on it. For every pull of Jyn’s trigger, a fighter falls.

There’s a brief, hysterical thought: _well, guess there goes any shot at diplomacy_.

Then again, these bastards blew up her fucking ship. Diplomacy was already having a bit of a rough go. Apparently the anarchists are living up to their name.

The memory of Luke’s disappointment strikes out at her. An odd moment for that, but she supposes it’s an odd moment for _anything_ , really, and it’s easier not to panic when she’s half in thought as she takes a skidding turn around a street corner, red blaster bolts following her. She considers the look on Luke’s face when he realized that Leia didn’t care _which_ side wound up with the Rebellion, as long as there was an ally to be had. Was there a better way to do this? She and Mon Mothma and Draven and Dodonna all went over the options together. They planned, they cancelled plans, they made _new_ plans. They argued. They went over the contingencies. They went over _everything_ , and it was clear that the government was the best choice. It wasn’t even all _Leia’s_ choice, even though it was one that she had agreed with. Draven had been convincing: the Aeronian government was more powerful, more predictable, less likely to go back on any deals if something better came up. They were easier to please, easier to court. It all made so much sense.

Still. _Still_. Now that it’s all going wrong, it’s hard not to wonder if she shouldn’t have argued for the anarchists. If she shouldn’t have sent Cassian and Jyn to the Lower Mair last night, when they clearly wanted to go. If she shouldn’t…

_No. Stop that. No point going over what-ifs and maybe-if-I-hads. Focus on the fact that you are currently being shot at._

“This way!” she shouts, taking another sudden turn. She has no idea where they’re going. It would be best if they could run into some government forces, though she can’t be too sure that _they_ wouldn’t shoot on sight, too, considering she’s dressed like a nobody and is out in the city in the middle of an anarchist attack. But capture by the anarchists would be worse, would mean being used as a negotiating tactic, and she isn’t about to let that happen. She’ll just have to make sure to make a convincing appeal to the government soldiers in the couple of seconds before they start shooting.

_You know_ , Bail had said once, chest puffed out with amused pride, his usual staid demeanor gone, allowing the father to peek out. _They tell me I’m quite the speechmaker._ It was just after her first time addressing a team of soldiers, soldiers being sent out to aid the Rebellion, to fight and maybe die for them. Bail’s hand had been heavy on her shoulder. _I know I say this a lot, but you just keep making me more and more proud: I’ve never been prouder of you than I am in this moment._

She can’t imagine that Bail would be very proud of her now, considering one of his favorite bits of advice was: _listen to the people around you. You’re here for a reason, and so are they. Trust them to be good at what they’re here to do._ Her father would have heeded Cassian’s advice. He would have sent Jyn where she could be more useful. He wouldn’t have left anything to chance. She certainly can’t imagine _him_ sprinting through a half-flooded street, dodging blaster fire from a bunch of persistent assholes who could have _maybe_ been convinced to negotiate if only she hadn’t bet everything on one hand.

She looks back. Jyn is still behind her, still firing at the anarchists, and she turns to face them completely, sidestepping with lethal efficiency across the street to take them out before they even get around the corner, and _now_ Leia gets a good look at her injuries.

She expected it to be bad. She knew it was bad just from her initial glimpse. But _still_ , her breath catches in her throat.

Leia has always been a person who works best under pressure. Who works best when there’s a target goal in front of her and a clock ticking down to zero. And this time, the goal is obvious: get Jyn some help before the adrenaline wears off and she realizes just how badly she’s hurt.

Also, outrun the anarchists.

Also, don’t die.

_Fuck_.

The answer comes to her in the form of a statue that she nearly runs past. It’s some hideous likeness of a former governor, some Imperial asshole half the people here probably hate. Leia only recognizes it because she had laughed at the picture in the dossier Draven prepared for her. He’d marked it on her map, too, with the surprisingly humorous and yet utterly _Draven_ description: “ugly statue”. It was a landmark of interest that she could talk about in her saying-nothing-real trading of pleasantries with Ambassador Metit.

It was also just one block over from a privately-run medical clinic. It stands out in her mind: the small green symbol printed on the map, just a bit around the corner from the hideous statue that looked more like a half-dissolved ration bar than a person. 

“Down there!” she shouts, pointing Jyn to the correct street. Jyn keeps going, and Leia hangs back to cover her, steadies herself against a nearby column, and she picks off the two anarchists who round the corner in front of her.

She waits, breathless, wind battered, but no one else follows.

By the time she joins Jyn, the other woman is leaning heavily on her side against the clinic wall, her pistol gripped in visibly trembling fingers. She has understood Leia’s idea, must have spotted the building with the green symbol on the sign out front, but Leia’s relief turns to frustration when she sees that the metal door is shuttered, locked tight, a sign that declares it closed swinging haphazardly in the wind.

“Can you get it open?” she asks. Jyn, swallowing her discomfort, nods, and she fiddles beneath her jacket for her lockpicking tools.

“I might need some help,” she admits. And that, that casual, uncharacteristic acceptance of her limitations, that might be the scariest thing that’s happened so far.

* * *

Luke doesn’t know what to do. That’s true a lot of the time. Maybe it’s true _most_ of the time. When he dreamed of joining the Rebellion back on Tatooine, he of course imagined scenarios in which he somehow, through some indefatigable skill, saved everyone and defeated the Empire singlehandedly. Doesn’t everyone dream of that? It doesn’t usually _happen_.

But it did happen. And now everyone he meets in the Rebellion, every soldier and politician and everything in between, knows exactly who he is. He’s just a _guy_ , was a moisture farmer growing up in the ass end of nowhere. Untrained in almost everything, expected to deal with the day-to-day of an organization he still doesn’t really know anything about. His fantasies never made it farther than the inevitable celebration of his skill. Never made it to the bureaucracy of rebelling, the morally questionable areas of rebelling, the _cost_ of rebelling.

Sprinting through the flooded streets of some war-torn planet with a jerk ambassador and a panicking spy? Not super high on the list of scenarios he would imagine back when he thought that joining the Rebellion would mean a life of heroism and glamor.

He doesn’t know what to do, because he’s still learning how to be in the Rebellion, how to be a rebel, how to be someone like Leia who can make the kinds of choices that can win a war. When he has people like Leia and Cassian near, he does all right. It helps to have them guiding him, in their way. Even if he thinks some of the stuff they say is horrifying, at least he trusts them enough to know that they wouldn’t suggest the bad stuff if they didn’t genuinely think it was the best way.

But if Leia was on that ship when it exploded, if Jyn was on that ship, then he’s lost both of them. Because Cassian is already so quickly losing himself, and they don’t even _know_ yet. He keeps trying to raise anyone on the comms, but no one’s answering, and the rain is getting worse, and Luke _doesn’t know what to do_.

“Cassian,” he starts, but it’s probably good that Cassian doesn’t even seem to hear him, because he has no idea what he was even going to try and follow that with. _Hey Cassian, buck up! Maybe they conveniently left the shuttle at the exact right time! Maybe our shuttle was somehow the only one that didn’t explode, and they’re just distracted and not answering your increasingly painful-to-listen-to calls for a reply._

The most he can do for Cassian is keep the anarchists off him. Cassian fires when he can be bothered to, but mostly he charges ahead, heedless of the danger, and Luke cleans up the mess behind him. He’s a good shot, getting better all the time, but he keenly feels the absence of his lightsaber now. Sure, he barely knows how to use it, but it would at least make him _feel_ better _._ The ambassador, thank the Force, doesn’t say anything. Just follows their lead and huddles increasingly under Cassian’s coat, bent against the rain. There’s blood trickling down Metit’s temple, Luke realizes. He’s dazed, looks uncertain. Head injury, maybe.

They need to slow down. They need to keep going. Luke doesn’t know _what_ they need to do.

When they reach the palace, when they climb the stairs to the bridge, when they see what remains of the ship, it gets harder to focus on their next steps. _What_ next steps? What can he possibly expect to do to make this better?

Cassian is one of the most restrained people that Luke has ever met. When he’s angry, his whole body seems to come alive with energy and tension, from his fingertips to his feet, everything held back and coiled inside him. It rarely actually _escapes_ him, instead building up and building up, an angry red smear of feeling, like something about to burst, until he manages to calm himself down, the anger slowly smothering until it’s gone, pressed down into inexistence. Cassian isn’t like Han, who lets out his anger with flailing gestures and sneering words. He’s not like Jyn, who funnels her anger into her fists, striking out at punching bags in the sparring ring or Imperial helmets beneath her ever-present truncheons. Even Baze, whose anger takes the form of his cannon dropping to his shoulder, lets it out. Not Cassian. Cassian controls. Cassian _stifles._ But as they stand there staring at the warped husk of metal that used to be their ship, Luke watches the anger _disappear._ Watches the tension bleed out of him, sees how the sudden absence of it sends him scattering apart. An implosion of sorts. It’s not natural, the way it vanishes so instantly. Like something inside him has been severed.

“Cassian,” Luke manages to say.

He doesn’t know what his own reaction is. He’s not really sure he _has_ one. It’s like there’s this disconnect in his brain, refusing to accept that this is happening, that they’re gone. Meeting Leia was like this whole new section of his heart had been filled up, and he can still _feel_ her there, like she hasn’t gone anywhere at all.

The ship in front of them is a smoking wreck, barely recognizable, hardly in the same shape it was when they’d all slept in it last night. There are pieces thrown all about the landing pad, shrapnel embedded in the walls around them, the pleasant mural Luke had so admired when they first got here turned into something horrifying, blackened and peeled, the painted faces distorted by the heat and ruin.

Ambassador Metit stares at the mural, and Luke prays he’s smart enough not to lament its loss aloud.

Then again, one would have to be an _utter_ fool to say anything when Cassian turns to look over his shoulder at them. He’s drenched, his face is pale with cold and horror, and he looks so young that for the first time Luke doesn’t feel like a child next to him. His eyes are too wide. His breathing ragged, hoarse.

Lost, Luke thinks. He looks like someone who has no idea where he is, no idea where he’s supposed to be. And for a selfish, difficult moment, Luke is angry: how is _he_ supposed to be in charge? This was supposed to be Cassian’s job. How could Cassian let himself fall apart like this?

But he shoves it aside. He doesn’t know what to do, but he knows that Leia would want him to keep going. To figure this out. To save as many people as he possibly can.

“We need to go,” he says. “We need to get the ambassador back to the palace. If they catch him, the whole thing’s lost.”

Cassian’s absent gaze goes sharper, betrayed, faltering. He looks back again at the ship, and Luke wishes that he had avoided seeing the expression on his face when he does. He could have lived his whole life without seeing that look in a man’s eyes.

“We need…” Cassian starts, and he squeezes his eyes shut, draws in a breath, slightly shuddering, like he’s bracing himself against a physical hurt. “Luke, go. Take him. I need…”

Time. A few moments to try and process it. Luke understands. He’s seconds from crumbling himself. He squeezes Cassian’s shoulder briefly, and he turns back to the ambassador.

The ambassador. Rude and callous and imperious and currently _sprinting_ across the bridge towards the palace.

“Oh, come on,” Luke sighs, starting to go after him.

Cassian reaches out, grabs Luke’s arm, yanks him back.

“Wait,” he chokes out, pointing. Luke isn’t sure what he’s trying to indicate, what tipped him off, but he can’t exactly miss what happens next.

The moment Ambassador Metit reaches the veranda, the anarchists descend on him, leaping from where they had evidently been hiding beyond the security gate, and it’s only Cassian’s grip on Luke’s arm that keeps the Jedi from being noticed next. Cassian pulls Luke back, drags him into the burnt shell of the shuttle, the flames mostly put out by the wind and rain but still generating enough smoke to hide their presence from people who aren’t looking very hard for them in the first place. The smoke is mostly billowing outwards, leaving the inside relatively clear, but they both crouch just inside the cargo bay, not wanting to go deeper, holding their sleeves over their mouths.

“We need to get out of here,” Cassian says. Not an easy prospect, trapped on the landing pad like this. They can always head back into the city, but that’ll get them further from where they want to be.

“What about him?” Luke asks. The anarchists have already wrestled Metit to the ground. They’ve already got guns pointed to his head. They’re already speaking to him, exultant, laughing. It doesn’t carry in the rain, but it’s obviously triumphant. He knows there’s nothing they can do, short of launching a two-man rescue operation that’s doomed to fail, but it still needs saying.

“Something isn’t right. This isn’t just a…this was…” Cassian’s momentary focus blurs again as he looks around the inside of the shuttle. Blasted, black, everything warped around them. He swallows heavily, and Luke shakes him by the shoulder.

Only a little, because Cassian terrifies him.

“Cassian, please!” he says. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I know. But what do we _do_?”

If he was expecting that to work, he probably should have known better.

Cassian pulls away from him and paces around what remains of the cargo bay, squinting in the darkness, his lip curling.

“Don’t you get it?” Cassian asks. It sounds like the beginning to the kind of speech that Luke has heard before. _You’ll never understand…_ or _you can’t possibly imagine…_ Thinking of Aunt Beru, Uncle Owen, thinking of Ben and Biggs and Leia’s smile when he agreed to come on this mission, Luke almost snaps at him. People have a tendency to assume that because he smiles easily, laughs easily, he hasn’t known loss. That because he believes in the goodness of the Rebellion, that it means he’s oblivious to the realities of war. But he should have known better than to assume that Cassian would be like that, because Cassian continues, “this mission, whatever we were supposed to accomplish, it’s lost. There’s nothing to do now. The anarchists never had a thought of allying with us. They wanted the distraction that the rebel princess would provide, and they got it. This has been planned for a very long time. They’ll tear the government apart or get us all killed when the Empire rolls in. Either way, it’s done, and we…and they…”

Gone again, drifting, and Luke needs to pull him back.

“What about Chirrut? Baze? Bodhi? K2? Where are _they_?”

Cassian’s head snaps up suddenly, something registering, and it takes a few seconds for him to shove down the horror of possibility.

“No, they can’t have been here yet,” he says, mostly to himself. “I don’t know where they… but…” he freezes suddenly in realization, and he fumbles, and he pulls out his tracker. Luke’s not sure what kind it is: it looks low-tech, even for the Rebellion. He’s seen better trackers on merchant droids. But the blinking light must mean something to Cassian, who sighs with evident relief, leaning back against the wall. Luke’s still feeling a little edgy and desperate, not trusting this momentary peace. Cassian feels like a faded impression of a man, liable at any moment to check out again, go all formless and blank. “The palace,” Cassian says, turning towards the smoke-dimmed exit, looking down at the small screen in his hands. “They’re in the palace. They must have…” He leaves again, brow furrowed, once again looking for something on the floor. Luke is working up the courage to try and shake him out of it again, but then he realizes, Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen coming to the forefront of his mind again: bodies. Bones. He’s looking for evidence.

“Cassian, stop it. _Please_. There’s…”

“There’s nothing here!” Cassian snaps, looking up at him, his gaze wild and daring Luke to argue. “They must have gotten out.”

“The explosion blasted the side out of the shuttle!” Luke says, grabbing Cassian desperately by the shoulders, trying to get him to focus. “Who knows what it might have done to…Cassian, listen to me. We can look, but first we…”

“Shut up!” Cassian hisses back.

“I’m sorry, but…”

“Shut _up_!”

Cassian slams Luke back against the wall, putting his hand over Luke’s mouth. The anarchists are laughing, loud, possibly getting closer to the ship. If they bothered to ask, Luke has no doubt that Ambassador Metit told them exactly who was with him. Cassian motions for Luke to stay where he is, and he creeps to the exit of the shuttle to see what’s going on, his blaster unsteady in his grasp.

Luke, left alone, lets his eyes drop to the floor the cargo bay, searches as best as he can. He can’t help it.

He doesn’t see any bodies either. And that space in his heart that Leia made still doesn’t feel any less full.

* * *

“Jyn is in trouble,” Chirrut says. Baze is rolling his eyes. Not that Chirrut can see it, but…statistically, it’s pretty much certain.

“That is often the case. I don’t know if you noticed, but we are _also_ in trouble.”

Baze is right enough about that, but Chirrut isn’t worried for them. They’re lucky to have been taken in by the government forces rather than the anarchists. The guards have thrown them into a cell, yes, but it’s a _warm_ cell, in a palace, with cushioned benches to sit on, and at least it isn’t raining in here. Besides, the anarchists would have just killed them.

Being trapped here might actually be advantageous for a number of reasons. Being back indoors means that Chirrut has his senses back, and he can fight if they have to. And if the anarchists win this particular battle – which seems likely, in Chirrut’s opinion – he and Baze are in a safe place. The anarchists may be lenient, may free them with the rest of the prisoners because a perceived enemy of the government they oppose is at the very least not automatically an enemy of them.

And anyone would agree that Chirrut is very, very good at bluffing.

No, they will be fine. He and Baze have gotten out of worse scrapes. But it’s harder now that there are more people to worry for, more people to take care of. He and his love are safe in this cell, and for years their combined safety was his main concern. But the children are all out there, scattered, alone. It isn’t himself that he’s worried for.

“They are all in trouble,” Chirrut says, and Baze sighs. Possibly he thinks Chirrut is just being dramatic, and indeed, Chirrut understands that. He _is_ feeling rather despondent: if only the storm had not clouded everything, he never would have allowed them to come to harm. He and Baze would be out where they could help the others.

“Is she hurt?” Baze asks, his voice quiet as he moves closer, to take a seat beside Chirrut on the bench.

“Hurt? I…maybe. But I think she’ll be all right.”

“Comforting.”

“I offer all I can,” he says, and Baze’s shoulder bumps up against his own.

“I know. I trust you.”

It’s the kind of thing that hasn’t needed saying for years. But Chirrut is so grateful to hear the words now.

* * *

The only thing worse than being trapped in the middle of a city-wide civil war, separated from your friends, is being trapped in the middle of a city-wide civil war, separated from all of your friends except for the _worst_ _possible friend to be stuck with_ , while also being shot at. Bodhi is, at best, an exceptionally nervous man, and K-2SO’s hulking presence beside him is a welcome target that neither of them can afford as they scamper through the streets together, looking for the docking port at which their new ship will _hopefully_ be waiting.

“What will we do if the ship is not there?” K-2SO wonders, ignoring the bright red laser bolt that flashes between them, too close. Bodhi ducks down another street, the droid following at a jolting, ambling run. He looks absurd. Even more absurd because he’s actually wearing the fucking poncho. “You should have let me keep that blaster.”

“Probably,” Bodhi admits, nearly out of breath. He’s trying to keep his eyes on the numbers of the groups of docks as they flash by. “Thought it best if we at least _tried_ to blend in. Didn’t realize half the kriffing guards are on the anarchists’ payroll.”

“What will we…?”

“K, I didn’t answer because I don’t _know_!” Bodhi snaps, finally spotting the correct symbol on a column ahead. They’re in the right area, at least. Now he just needs the specific landing pad… “Try raising Cassian again! Jyn! Anybody!”

“I told you. There is interference in this area of the city. Possibly in every area of the city. If I were in the ship, I would be able to tell..."

“And would that help us? At all? Genuine question!”

K-2SO’s reply is cut off by another alarm from nearby, joining the other fourteen thousand alarms ringing from every rooftop. The only positive to all this is that Bodhi is pretty sure they aren’t _actually_ being targeted. They’re just two very unlucky bastards, one of them obviously Imperial even in his poncho “disguise”, too driven by purpose to duck into any of the nearby buildings like the rest of the people in this market, the _smart_ people in this market, huddling in wait until the shooting stops. This was supposed to be the safe area of the city, was supposed to be unaffected by the anarchists, but clearly something has gone terribly wrong, clearly this is worse than Cassian thought, and...

“Yes,” K-2SO says finally.

“Yes?” Bodhi has already forgotten what he said to K-2SO to prompt the response. To be fair, he’s a little busy trying not to get shot. Up ahead, finally: Dock 6512. He slides around the corner and runs down the tunnel that will _hopefully_ take them to their new ship, if by some miracle they haven’t been fucked over by the merchant who transferred the deed to them bare minutes before the firefight began.

“Yes, it would help. If I could track the location of the interference, we could…interfere. With the interference.”

“Uninterfere it?”

“That is not a word. But yes.”

“Right. Okay. _Now_ we’re talking! Good!”

“I _should_ tell you that our odds of actually…”

“You don’t have to tell me anything! Shut up!”

“This would have been easier if you had let me keep the blaster.”  

* * *

The clinic doors may have been locked and shuttered, but when the door slides open after several frustrating minutes of Jyn’s fumbling attempts, they find that it isn’t as empty as it should be.

Luckily, Leia was expecting this. She’s been in warzones before with small medical clinics just like this one. Privately owned, maybe not _entirely_ neutral (it’s hard to be truly neutral, after all), but at least technically unaffiliated. Shuttering their doors until the fighting is over and a side has won. Trying to avoid scenarios just like this one: people with guns marching in and demanding treatment. Because obviously then you risk someone from the _other_ side marching in and demanding treatment, and then you’ve got a firefight in a crowded clinic, and you just can’t have that. But there are usually still people inside, ready to open their doors once the danger has passed, and this is no exception.

Leia spares a thought to what she must look like, striding through the door with her gun outstretched, her other arm dragging along the stumbling form of a severely injured woman, her eyes steely and fiery at once.

“Fix her,” she snarls to the turquoise-skinned Twi’lek who leaps up from behind the counter, fumbling too much with a blaster to have a hope of even pointing it in the right direction before Leia pulls the trigger. The woman’s green eyes are big, wide, terrified, but she nods. Jerky, frightened movements. She drops her blaster, and it clatters loudly to the ground. Leia has the presence of mind to say “thank you”, but she’s pretty sure it doesn’t help.

* * *

Jyn’s next hour or so is flashes of time. Pain. Confusion. Alertness coming in spikes and then ebbing out again, fading to lethargy. Leia’s face is near hers, asking for something. Is she speaking Basic? Is she speaking real words at all? There’s a lovely Twi’lek, too, speaking too quickly for Jyn to keep up, and Leia is helping her, is digging through a crate of something across a small, dimly lit room. Jyn feels cool, cold, tries to burrow closer to Cassian in sleep, but she’s not with Cassian at all, he isn’t there. She’s...

The cold becomes warmth, searing up her back, and it jerks her awake, sends her scrambling off the gurney, reaching for a weapon. But she misjudges, and she goes crashing to the floor on her knees, her _bare_ knees, and she’s…is she not wearing pants?

“What the fuck?” she slurs.

“Easy!” Leia’s clipped voice snaps her out of her fog, and she drags her eyes over to the princess, standing on the other side of the bed. The Twi’lek is holding a syringe in her hand, looking guilty, but it’s Leia who approaches Jyn with almost comical caution, reaching out like she thinks Jyn will bite her if she gets too close. “You’re fine. We’re safe. Relax.”

“Hospital?” Jyn asks, her voice scratchy and hoarse, and Leia nods. Shrugs.

“Close enough. Private clinic. Do you remember breaking in?”

Jyn tries, but can’t remember much except the sound of wind, the sound of fire, the sting of it on her back. She shakes her head.

“No, I just…I can’t…”

“Hey, guess that’s a little impressive,” Leia says, and it’s obvious that she’s concerned by the gap in memory, but there’s something very _Han_ about her roguish smile when she adds, “you picked the lock on a heavy duty security door while half-conscious.”

Smiling weakly, Jyn says, “I _am_ pretty good at that.”

Leia’s plainly relieved, but she bites back a smile and offers her arm. Jyn takes it, allows Leia to help pull her to her feet. It would be easier if Leia could wrap an arm around her waist, but she doesn’t, keeps her hands out in front of her and allows Jyn to do most of the work. It must be worse than she realized. She can’t feel much, aside from the fading pinpricks from whatever the Twi’lek injected her with, but she can tell she’s been heavily bandaged. Once she’s standing, she reaches a hand back, tentatively prods at the covered skin there.  

Leia, gently pulling her hand back around to the front of her, says, “Hinara here just stuffed you with enough stims to get a wounded bantha back on their feet.”

“No I didn’t. That would kill you,” says the Twi’lek, flushing pink when Jyn looks at her. “But you should be okay for the next few hours. You’ll need a real bacta treatment to avoid infection, but you don’t have time for that, and I’m going to need all the bacta I have to treat the wounded when the fighting lets up.”

“She found it in her heart to spare a few patches, though,” Leia says, waving her pistol in the air with slightly scary grin. With her diplomatically braided hair gone all wet and matted, and the getup she borrowed from Jyn, she looks positively criminal, and Jyn can’t help the light chuckle, even as she rolls her shoulders to try and assess her range of movement.

“I wouldn’t push it too much,” Hinara warns. “Considering the circumstances…” Gesturing, vaguely, towards the door. “…I know that’s a ridiculous thing to say. But you’re all the same. You’ll push yourself and end up back here in twenty minutes. I still say you should stay here.”

“I stick a blaster in her face and she’s still doing her best to save your life,” Leia says, shaking her head with some measure of genuine fondness. “You should think about joining up with the Alliance, Hinara. We could always use good medics.”

“Seriously? You’re trying to recruit her _now_?” Jyn mutters, casting about for her coat. Realizing that it must have been discarded already, probably crumbled and covered in burnt flesh anyway, she groans.

“No saving it,” Leia confirms, “Or your pants. You’ve got burns on the backs of your thighs, too.”

“Seriously, _infection_ ,” Hinara insists, pointing at Jyn’s legs as if she thinks Jyn doesn’t understand Basic.

“Half of your pants were _fused_ to your skin,” Leia translates, shuddering. “I couldn’t look away. But we can’t have you running around in your underclothes, though that’d be a _hell_ of a distraction, so Hinara has graciously offered to let you wear the bottoms of one of her uniforms until we can find an anarchist corpse with short enough legs.”

The material is rough, baggy, and pastel blue, but Jyn steps into the pants without complaint. Hinara hovers while she does, ready to catch her if she loses her balance, but those stims are doing their job. The pull of the bandages on her legs is a little harsh, but it’s bearable.

“Coat?” she asks. She barely has time to inwardly note that her throat is dry before Hinara is shoving a glass of water at her. Maybe Leia wasn’t crazy to bring up recruitment.

“No coats to spare, unfortunately,” Leia answers. “You can take mine.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“ _I’m_ being stupid?” Leia’s already halfway out of the black jacket she lifted from Cassian’s things earlier, and she laughs, casting a look towards the Twi’lek nurse. “What did I say? So self-sacrificing. The pair of them. Always looking for ways to out-inconvenience each other. Probably the root of the problem in the first place.”

“ _Seriously_?”

“Oh, don’t sound so offended. I was watching her tweeze your pants out of your burned flesh, Jyn. Had to pass the time somehow. Comms are busted, by the way. Thought it was just bad luck in the explosion at first, but it’s bigger than that. Hinara can’t get through to any of her co-workers.”

“You realize that it’s not very intimidating when you make friends with the person you’re holding hostage, right?” Jyn asks. She takes the jacket, though, and accepts Leia’s help in shrugging into it, hissing as it pulls at the hastily-taped-up bandages. “ _Fuck_.”

“I’m my father’s daughter, what do you want me to say?” Leia asks. “Besides, Hinara’s starstruck. Fan of the Rebellion, apparently.”

“But not the anarchists,” Hinara replies quickly, flushing again. Leia pats her on the hand, a bit patronizing.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. We’re not here to pick sides. Though the anarchists _did_ blow us up, and they shot at us, and they ruined this entire mission. Still, can’t say I blame them. We _are_ the government, sort of. Representatives of it, anyway.”

“Comms are down everywhere?” Jyn asks, wrapping her scarf around her neck. Leia shrugs.

“No way to tell. They’re down in this part of the city, anyway.”

“We need to get back to the others.”

“Yeah, no shit. I was hoping you might have some ideas.”

“All my ideas depend on whether or not they found the ambassador,” Jyn says.

“You were trying to _save_ the ambassador?” Hinara asks doubtfully. “ _Him_?”

“It’s politics,” Leia says dismissively in explanation. But Jyn sees something on the Twi’lek’s face that goes beyond the simple censure that Leia seems to think the woman is displaying.

“What is it?” she asks. “What about the ambassador?”

“I…” Hinara looks between the two of them. “I swear I was telling the truth about not being…with the anarchists. But, well. You hear things, working in the city like this. Patching people up when they don’t have the kind of money to take them to a real hospital. And he was a target. From what little I know of, um. Whatever happened today. He was one of their biggest targets.”

Maybe a little too defensive there, but Jyn isn’t interested in figuring out the Twi’lek’s loyalties in this conflict, considering she doesn’t have any of her own.

What she _is_ interested in is the fact that the Twi’lek just told her that getting anywhere near the ambassador is a bad idea, and that’s _exactly_ what Cassian and the others went and did. She sighs, her hands in tiny fists on her hips, trying to think past the stimulants telling her to just _go_ , just go fight someone! Just run! She tries to think like _Cassian_ would.

“We go to the market,” she decides. “The shipyard. We’ll have to avoid the palace, go the long way, but it’s our best option. Bodhi and K should be there already. They might be waiting with a ship. I’ve no idea how we’re going to find them, but we need to get you off this planet.”

“ _Me_ ,” Leia repeats, her voice dark and dead, warning. Jyn doesn’t have time to feel hypocritical, doesn’t have time to feel sympathy, remembering the fire that burns inside her when people (when _Cassian_ especially) try to keep her safe by keeping her out of the battles that are her own to fight.

“You,” Jyn confirms. “I’m not leaving here without them, but you’re too important. If I didn’t make sure you were out of the fighting before going back for them, Cassian’d kill me himself.”

“Oh, please,” Leia scoffs. “Of course he’ll be furious. Since when does _that_ matter?”

“You’re the priority,” Jyn says. She wriggles back into her boots, tying them with a fierceness that makes her back ache just from the shifting of her muscles under the burns. They’re _soaked_ , too, which is just perfect.

“Fuck you,” Leia says, the genuine sneer a surprising sight on the princess’s delicate features.

“Fuck _me_?” Jyn asks. Her laugh is bitter, harsh, giving as much anger as she’s receiving. “For what? For trying to protect you? It’s for the _Rebellion_. Thought you’d like that.”

“Oh, so we’re being _snide_ now? You must be feeling well enough for me to really give it to you, then: if the Rebellion was all that mattered to me, I’d have left you bleeding and crisping on the side of the road when you started lagging. I’d have taken off and left you to cover my escape. Let you get captured or killed for me. Is that the kind of Rebellion you want? Because I was under the impression that that kind of ruthlessness cost you your father, and nearly cost you Cassian, and nearly cost you and all your team your _lives_. I was under the impression that you gave a shit about how a thing goes down. If you think I’d leave Luke and Cassian and all the rest I can save behind, you don’t know me nearly as well as you think you do.”

The princess is in her face, now. Not entirely unlike Cassian, hair dripping, walking closer after Eadu, their raw nerves chafing against one another. Jyn feels the same frustrated sobs bubbling up inside her. She doesn’t let them out this time either.

“It’s bigger than them,” she says. “For you. For _him_. The Rebellion is too important to risk you getting killed because I didn’t do everything I could to keep you out of their hands.”

“You think if Cassian was with me right now, and you were out there, you think he’d waste a single second getting me to safety when he could be running after you?”

“Of course he would,” Jyn scoffs. Leia’s expression falters, and she lets out a disbelieving laugh.

“You really believe that, don’t you?” she asks, and it’s as if they’ve been airlocked. As if the air has been violently expelled from the room. Jyn can hardly force herself to breathe.

“Because it’s true,” she says.

“Jyn…”

“He’s right, anyway. He’d be right to leave me.”

“Oh, Jyn.”

“Stop it. Stop acting like I’m a child who doesn’t understand him. I _do_ understand him, and that’s exactly why I know I’m right.”

“Jyn, that’s…that’s absurd. How can you _still_ …?”

“Because Cassian does the right thing! Why do you think he keeps doing it? Keeps going back to you and to Draven and to all the rest? He thought he was done with that, with killing for you. Do you have any _idea_ what it must have felt like for him? Sitting there in that briefing and realizing that it wasn’t just Draven asking him to sacrifice more parts of himself for the fucking _cause_? That it was Mon Mothma, and you, and all the rest? You keep demanding this shit of him, and he keeps doing it, because Cassian does the right thing. Even if he hates it.”

“He didn’t have to say yes,” Leia says, quiet and firm. And Jyn aches with the knowledge that she’s right, aches with the hindsight-perfect awareness that Cassian tried to say no for _once_ but then turned around and took the mission because her fear made him fearful to go against her.

But that’s not for Leia to know. Nothing about that hotel room on Coruscant is ever for anyone else to know, and so Jyn says, “but he _will_ say yes, because he’ll do the right thing even if it tears him up inside. Even if he _hates_ himself for it. I’m not him. Half the time I want to fucking strangle him for it, but right now? Getting you to safety is the right thing. It’s what Cassian would do, and he would be right to do it. So that’s what I’m doing.”

 “And hating me for it,” Leia points out. She’s still infuriatingly calm, and Jyn has the feeling of trying to argue with stone. Has a feeling that she’s already lost, somehow.

“I don’t hate you. I hate all of it. Hate this entire kriffing galaxy,” Jyn mutters, pulling tighter at Cassian’s coat, sending sparkles of pain up and down her damaged nerves, like she wants to try and stay angry even though it’s bleeding out of her. The stims will last a while longer. She’s not worried about that. But she’s off-balance and drifting, cut off from her team. She takes in a deep, sharp breath. She just needs to do her duty. “What’s absurd is us having this conversation. It isn’t a debate.”

“Jyn,” Leia says, grabbing her arm, refusing to let her go. “You’re not hearing me. _I’m not leaving_. You’re not leaving. Even if we could find Bodhi and K in that storm, we’re not going anywhere until we have the whole team back together.”

Jyn doesn’t _want_ to leave. Of course she doesn’t. But the Rebellion could crumble to pieces if the Empire finds Leia here. They could lose everything they’ve fought for.

“You’re the priority,” she says, hopelessly.

“Not right now. You’re welcome to try and fight me over this, but I’ll win. I know your weak spots.”

“Yeah, it’s the entire kriffing back of my body. Don’t get too big up on yourself, princess. I could still beat you in a fight.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Leia says, but she seems to know that Jyn isn’t going to fight her.

Force, but Cassian would be furious with her for giving in.

“Okay,” Jyn says. “We’ll look for them. We’ll try to warn them. But at the first sign of trouble, we get you away from here.”

Leia smiles that semi-feral smile again.

“Excellent,” she says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this puts me officially over 200k words for this series, and just, holy shit. I've written the first drafts of 5 novels in a series that amounts to around 300k of the sloppiest, messiest writing in the world, unedited, and that took me about a year and a half, so THIS? 200k written and edited and posted in 4 months? Utterly ridiculous. Your continued support and encouragement is the only possible explanation I can think of for this, so thank you so, so much!


	7. Let Me See

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ended up moving a 1,000+ word Bodhi POV section to the next chapter to try and trim this chapter down, and it's STILL absurdly long. I have officially lost control of my life

There must be something broken deep within him. Deeper even than he already thought – _knew_ – he was broken before.

It’s the only explanation for the fire inside him now, the shards of molten steel piercing him from within. Last time he lost this much, he was a child. Barely old enough to understand, but old enough to feel the empty gulf of after. The numbing shock of _she isn’t coming back_ giving way to a steeper grief, cold and empty and stinging with a sensation not unlike frostbite. But this time it’s white-hot, the pain, like something inside of him is burning up every shred of who he used to be.

It’s as if some of the fire inside her, the fire that he noticed when they first met, was seeping into him every time he looked into her eyes, every time he let her see a little more of himself, and now it’s bursting out from inside him, dissipating into the air, mixing with the rain and the ash and the smoke and…

She’s dead.

She’s dead. The explosion ruptured the ship. Her body burned away (he cringes, physically, his back hunched at the thought of there being _nothing_ left of her, nothing left to look at or touch).

She’s dead. And any hope that she’s not, any hope that she might still be out there, it’s because he doesn’t want to believe it. It’s because he can’t accept it. Luke was right. The lack of bodies doesn’t mean anything except that the fire was hot, that it was hopefully _quick_ , that they were dead before they had time to fear it. The longer he allows himself to cling to even the _slightest_ hope, the worse it will be when he has to accept it. The harder it will be to pick himself back up.

The thought is absurd, almost laughable. _Pick himself back up?_ When he thought she was just _leaving_ him, he’d felt like someone had scooped out his insides and hollowed him. Broken enough without knowing she’s…

“Cassian!”

Luke, still trying, still following, his eyes harsh with pain and a reproach the boy so clearly doesn’t want to feel. He’s trying to be understanding, but he’s also trying to _fix_ this with words, trying to talk Cassian into being Cassian again, and Cassian can’t deal with that right now. Can barely deal with walking, with focusing. He had gotten them out of that scrape with the anarchists, hadn’t he? He had found them an alternate route towards the palace so they can follow the tracker. He had remembered the location of an alternate entrance on the roof. What more does Luke _want_ from him?

“Can you sense it or not?” Cassian asks. His voice sounds rough even to him, and he’s vaguely sorry for it, for a moment, before that regret fades away again into the nothing that keeps overtaking him.

“I can’t…it doesn’t work like that!” Luke says helplessly. “I don’t know _what_ I can do. I’m…I can tell you I’m _pretty_ sure there aren’t any people up ahead, but that might not be right!”

He’s so like Bodhi for a moment (oh, and Bodhi, poor Bodhi, he isn’t going to be able to handle this) that Cassian has to stop, stomach churning with pity.

He wishes he could have been alone when he found the ship. He wishes he could have just turned around and hunted down those anarchists until his blaster and his chances were all spent. But Luke is here, and if Leia won’t make it back, if Leia’s gone into dust with Jyn, then at least the Rebellion’s greatest hero, the last Jedi, the last best hope, needs to survive.

“We don’t have much of a choice. Stay behind me, at least,” he says, and he avoids Luke’s dogged attempts at making eye contact, and he clutches the blinking tracker in his hand, and he keeps going.

“Okay, so what about the ambassador?” Luke asks. It’s an obvious tactic to keep Cassian talking, to keep him from disappearing entirely into himself, but Cassian doesn’t care enough to feel offended by it. He feels, at intermittent moments, alarmed by this lack of fight. It’s usually in moments like this that he loses some of his control, yes. Snapping at people, yelling. Like Eadu, hardly managing to control his voice, his frustration palpable, nauseating, needing to get _out…_ “Cassian! What about the ambassador? Are we seriously just going to run away? We could have helped him!”

Confrontational. Loud. _Persistent._ Were he not feeling dangerously unlike himself, Cassian would loathe all of those things, but Luke’s tone hardly even touches him.

“We couldn’t have done anything,” he says, his tone leaving no room for argument. “We couldn’t see how many there were. They had the advantage, a defensible position. We would have had to cross the bridge to even get close, exposing ourselves to blaster fire, and for what? _Him?_ It was too late the second he started running from us. They will use him as a demonstration now, probably. Assassinate him publically, along with whatever other figureheads they’ve managed to get their hands on. Or perhaps hold him hostage to negotiate a deal, though _that_ seems unlikely. It might just be a distraction, allow some teams into the palace, or maybe not. It doesn’t matter.”

“How can you say that?” Luke asks, pleading now, and he’s begging for more than the life of the ambassador, Luke knows. He’s looking for Cassian to give him a reason to think that the Rebellion is what he always dreamed of it being. He’s asking Cassian to lie, to give him an example of goodness, to make everything make sense again, and Cassian resents him so strongly for a moment that it almost takes his breath away. Luke is trying to bring Cassian back from the brink as if he thinks Cassian would _want_ him to.

“How can I say _what_?” he asks. Annoyance flares in his chest, feeling filling up the former absence of it, because Luke has managed. He has achieved his objective. He has rattled Cassian, gotten under his skin. It was just what he wanted. “I say it doesn’t matter because _it doesn’t matter._ What would you have me say? That the life of a few pampered bureaucrats who sat around getting fat while their people starved behind the lines of this war matter? They don’t! This entire mission…”

“The mission!” Luke laughs, sounding less like himself than he ever has. “This isn’t just a mission, Cassian! This is a whole _planet_! And they’re suffering!”

“And what are we supposed to do about it?”

“I thought we were here to help!”

“We _were_ here to help. Not in a way that you can stomach, is that it? Have you forgotten that we are here to take down the Empire at _any_ cost?”

“Any cost, huh?” Luke asks, his chest heaving, his voice barely audible over the sound of the rain and the wind, but audible enough. “Does that include Jyn?”

Cassian can feel every muscle in his body turn to stone at that, and the pain and anger twist so very deep that he’s certain he’ll never be able to separate them. He stops walking, turns back to look at Luke, and he has no need to wonder what his expression looks like, because the Jedi blanches, takes a step back, stammers to find the words of apology that he probably wanted to deliver even _before_ he said it.

Luke is not a cruel man. But Luke is a frightened man, and frightened men pretend at being monsters when it’s the only thing that will keep them together. Cassian knows this. It doesn’t burn inside him any less for knowing it.

“We’re getting into this palace,” he says, and every part of him is trembling with a need to release his anger, but he won’t. Not even now. Not even…

_Green eyes flashing to his, “trust goes both ways”, her chin tipped up to him, defiant, her words designed to cut the ties between them only pulling him closer. “I’m not used to people sticking around when things go bad”. Calling his name as he falls..._

“And _then_ what?” Luke asks. Quiet, still a little terrified. But still defiant, too.

“Chirrut and Baze are still here, and I am not leaving without them,” Cassian says. _They, and Bodhi and K, they are all I have left_ , he doesn’t say. _And they might not even be enough._

_Her eyes locking with his as she disappeared in a cloud of smoke on Kopha, her expression daring him to judge her when she said “body heat” on Hoth, the shivery pale skin of her stomach clenching under his fingers when he’d drawn his arm around her the first time, thinking ‘I’ve never touched this part of her before’, like a fool._

“Okay, so we find them. And then what? We can help these people!” Luke insists.

“Help them? At this point, we will be lucky to _survive_ them! We will be lucky to find the rest and get out of here before the Empire moves in and takes _everyone_ out! There is no helping them. We need to get you out of here. That’s what we’re doing.”

“What, do you think I can’t handle myself in a fight? I’m as good a fighter as any of you!”

“You’re too important to the Rebellion.”

“And you’re _not_?”

That’s an absurd question, and Cassian almost doesn’t know how to respond to it. Because Luke isn’t entirely wrong: the heroes of Scarif are important, Rogue One is important, they’re a figurehead even if they aren’t technically Rebellion anymore, and Jyn being gone will be a blow not just to him, not just to their family. But Luke is different. Luke destroyed the _Death Star._ Luke is a Jedi, and they need him far more than they need a shadow of a man with a blood-stained memory. Besides, what does it matter what Cassian means to the Rebellion? Does Luke actually expect him to go back?

“Not nearly as much as you, and it doesn’t matter anyway,” he says.

“You keep saying that. It’s still not true.”

“I don’t see why you’re so convinced that we have to discuss this,” Cassian says. Deflecting. Thinking _I can’t go back. Not like this. Not without her_.

“Because I’m trying to keep you together! Us together! Cassian I’m _sorry_ about Jyn. I’m sorry about...about Leia.” His voice breaks on the second name, and if he starts crying, Cassian is pretty sure he’s going to throw himself at the mercy of the anarchists anyway. “But you need to stay with me. I can’t feel everything, okay? I can’t tell you if there are more anarchists inside the palace, or if they’re just up there, trying to get in. I can’t tell you what’s going on but I can _feel_ you, Cassian. I can. And it’s…you need to just…I’m sorry, but I can’t do this without you. You need to keep it together.”

There are a thousand words he wants to say to the Jedi, but all he can think of is Jyn. Jyn’s eyes, her mussed-up morning hair, the way her hands always ball up into fists when she’s asleep. Keep it together? Keep it _together_?

But the anger goes again, bleeds out, and he hates Luke a bit for it, but he’s right. Cassian knows he’s right. At least until they’re all safe, until he’s able to salvage everything he possibly can, he needs to _try._

“Fine,” he says. It sounds grim. It sounds lifeless. Luke seems as relieved as if Cassian had clapped him on the back and passionately promised to get them all home.

There’s a bitterness inside Cassian now that he doesn’t quite understand. He has always known the galaxy for what it is. Maybe there was a time before his fight started, when he was too young to appreciate it, when he thought fairness was something real. Like there was some sort of cosmic scale that made certain that good people were rewarded and bad people were punished. It seems like the kind of thing the hazy impressions of his parents would have imparted to give comfort to their son. To reassure him whenever things seemed dire. “Don’t worry”, he thinks his mother said once, “things always work out in the end. You’ll see.”

But he knows that isn’t true. It hasn’t ever been true. It’s never been more than a pretty lie to keep a child from worrying over things he was too young to understand. So why does he think of it now? Why does his petulant, childish inner voice insist that this isn’t fair, this isn’t right, this wasn’t supposed to happen?

It isn’t fair. Of course not. They survived Scarif to get here. They survived everything to get here so they could be _together._ And she left him, but she came back, and they were going to try to get better at this. And now…

But he used to know better than to expect that _anything_ would happen the way it should if life were fair. So why is this so hard to accept?

But Baze and Chirrut are still out there. Bodhi and K-2SO too. As long as he still needs to find them, as long as there is still something for him to do, he doesn’t have to think about anything. He doesn’t have to think about _what now?_ He doesn’t have to think about her.

* * *

As much as Jyn hates to admit it, Leia’s plan to disguise themselves as anarchists isn’t a bad one. A bit risky if they run into government forces before anarchist ones, but Leia seems confident in her ability to talk her way out of that. And it’s a plan that Jyn would have undertaken on her _own_ without question. But despite her reluctant agreement to allow Leia to charge with her into danger, she almost draws the line again. Almost finds some way to keep Leia behind at the clinic, or tries to figure out how she can trick Leia into following her to the market anyway, to be foisted off on Bodhi and K2 somehow. Trying to blend in with a bunch of anarchists with the intention of figuring out where their signal jammer might be hiding is probably not the sort of behavior a princess should be engaging in.

Granted, telling her de facto bodyguard to go fuck herself is also not very princessy behavior, but Jyn is getting used to that.

She does what she can to make sure Leia stays safe. She scouts ahead, making sure that they don’t get surprised by any anarchists. Fortunately, it seems like Jyn and Leia finished off the only ones who were actively chasing them, because the bodies still lay where they were left. They run into a few people who are scavenging what they can off one of the dead fighters, but said scavengers are unarmed, and they scatter quickly back into the building across the street when they see that Jyn has a blaster.

The body does _not_ have short enough legs, but Jyn isn’t spending another second in these ridiculous pants, so she puts Leia on guard and strips the body in the middle of the alley, handing Leia the man’s coat, taking his pants for herself. She has to roll them a few times at the ankles before she can stuff them into her boots, and they’re sodden and cold and were just _seconds_ ago on the body of a dead man, but they’re not an absurdly visible pastel blue color, so Jyn accepts them happily.

The coat swallows Leia up, and so does the scarf that she takes from the body to pull up over her mouth if the disguise is necessary. Between the two of them, they look like children playing dress-up.

“Do I look as ridiculous as you do?” Leia asks, holding her arms – sleeves drooping down, covering her fingertips entirely – out to the side. Jyn can’t stifle a laugh in time. Forgets she’s angry with Leia for just long enough to nod, pushing her hair out of her eyes, smiling genuinely. “Well, those pants make you look like a Hutt.”

“ _Nice_ ,” Jyn scoffs, shoving the anarchist’s body close to the wall to clear the alleyway, just in case they have to come back this way. Out of an absence of anywhere else to put them, she tosses Hinara’s pants down on top of him. When she looks up, Leia has a waiting expression on her face. “What?”

“This is where you tell me I look like…I don’t know. Something insulting.”

“A pain in the ass?”

“I’ll blame your lack of creativity on the painkillers.”

“A _royal_ pain in the ass?”

“I guess you at least get points for accuracy. Maybe you’re just better at punching than you are at insulting people.” A pause, eyes narrowed. “Not that you should take that as a suggestion.”

“I’m not going to punch you. I’m pretty sure it would tear open these bandages. And you look like you’re maybe eight years old right now. I’d feel guilty.”

“That’ll do,” Leia decides. She leads the way out of the alley, giving a rather undignified snort when she glances back to look at the now-pantsless corpse sprawled against the wall, Hinara’s borrowed uniform crumbled on top of him. “I would _love_ to see the look on the face of the person who discovers that,” she says. She pulls up the hood on her new jacket, and Jyn is jealous of the depth of it, of the coverage of it. Her own jacket, Cassian’s _favorite_ jacket, the worn-in black leather one, is warm, but the scarf she’s been using to cover her head is already soaked through and clinging to her hair.

At first, the disguises hardly seem necessary. As they hurry through the streets, relying on Leia’s memory of their escape to get them back to where they started, they see so few people that Jyn starts to wonder if the entire _city_ has evacuated. The sounds of fighting have died down, or maybe have just moved farther away so they can’t be heard over the rain and wind, and she struggles against a sense of immense lethargy even through the stims.

Once they start getting closer to the palace, the delicate spires raising up above the buildings around it like a beacon, there are more people. Anarchists, mostly, judging from the fact that their faces are covered and their hands occupied with blasters and knives. Some civilians, too, and it reminds Jyn of Hinara’s cagey refusal to throw in with the anarchists but seeming reluctance to decry them. Some groups are larger, talk freely, their voices lowered to a private volume but clearly excited, fairly bouncing with energy. Others are more staid, somber, looking around with sneering disgust. Jyn takes it all in and tries not to think too much about Saw.

As they get closer, the number of people heading in the same direction increases. Jyn is naturally suspicious of groups of people moving towards something without any visible triggers; in her experience, it rarely means anything but trouble. But there’s something almost languid about these movements. As if the people aren’t in any hurry. As if there isn’t a battle to be won. Jyn can’t _help_ but think of Saw now. He would make that face that the Partisans feared to see him make: furious, disgusted, disappointed all in one.

A lack of cohesion, she realizes. That’s what this is. They seem to know where they’re headed, and some of them even seem eager to get there. But there’s a lack of organization here that tells Jyn they’ve already lost. They might not know it yet, they might even think they’ve started something here today that’s going to last. But they’re wrong.

The government was the right choice, she concedes. She has a fondness for groups like this, maybe a _weakness_ for them, but she sees it now: Leia was right to choose the other side. Not that Jyn’s about to tell her that.

They cross into the street that contains the staircase that will take them up to the landing pads. There are anarchists posted on streetcorners who give them no more than a few uncurious, passing glances, eyes flickering over Leia and Jyn and then away. There are a few people heading up the stairs, but most of them seem to be heading onwards, to the square in front of the palace. Leia hesitates when it comes time to choose.

“Should we check it out?” she asks. Jyn feels the same hesitation, the same reluctance to make a choice.  

“We’ll have a better view from up on the bridge,” she decides.

* * *

The remains of the ship are worse than Jyn imagined, and despite the torrential rain, they’re still smoldering lightly. The smell is horrific, acidic and smoky and _wet_ , and Jyn and Leia both forego their pride to keep their sleeves pressed up against their mouth and nose as they carefully walk around it.

Most of the anarchists up here are trying to peer down into the square, grumbling about the rain, moving on to try and get closer, crossing some of the interconnecting bridges that will take them into a better sightline of whatever is going on down there. Jyn can’t stop feeling pinpricks of unease up and down her spine. She breathes better once she and Leia are alone on this bridge – it’s not the farthest from the square, but it’s set back enough as to make it undesirable for those who came up here for the view, and they quickly find themselves alone. As Leia fiddles with her scarf, she keeps an eye on the staircase, while Jyn watches the gate to the veranda carefully. It’s open, but the archway stays clear. She wonders what they’d find if they crossed the bridge. Have the anarchists breached the palace already? Or were the palace guards able to hold them off? Is that why the crowd is gathering? Storming the gates?

“What are you thinking?” Leia asks. Now she’s peering down into the crowd below, trying to make sense of the mass of bodies three stories down, so distorted by the rain and the wind and the distance that they look like nothing but a constant roiling movement. One of the anarchists is shouting into a device to make his voice louder, but all it does up here is echo appallingly, words lost in a swirl of guttural, clearly passionate language.

Words drift into focus and then slur back out into nothing: _liars, complicit, Imperial, starvation, blockade, murder, children, traitors_.

“Fucking Draven,” Leia gripes, for some reason Jyn doesn’t fully understand (though it’s not like she doesn’t agree). Jyn keeps her eyes trained on the veranda, trying to spot any movement along the balcony that will tell her if it’s safe or not. She doesn’t want to be caught unawares, and her spine is still tingling with that awful nervous feeling, like she’s missing something.

“Look for Baze,” she says, glancing at Leia briefly. “If they’re in the crowd down there, he’ll be easiest to spot.”

“Easiest being _extremely_ relative,” Leia grumbles, eyes narrowing as if that will help her see through the rain.

Jyn joins her in her search as much as she can, but Leia’s right, of course. It seems hopeless. Between the rain and the amount of people down there, even Baze would blend in. What was Cassian saying during that private briefing before they left for Coruscant? She hadn’t really been paying attention, too distracted by her own insecurities, her own fears. Things that seem petty and pointless now and are about to feel like a tragedy of wasted time.

Several hundred fighters, he said, right? It looks like most of them must be gathered in the square, all of them standing in a circle around the man who has been shouting his speech at them and a line of people who are hunched against the wind in front of him.

No, wait. They’re kneeling, hunched because they’re frightened, cowed, captured.

A fleeting, half-formed thought: _so_ that’s _what they’re doing here._

It’s strange, the moments when everything seems to cooperate, to allow understanding that would have been impossible only seconds before. The rain lessens. The sun bursts, momentarily, through the clouds. The square is awash in golden light, just in time for one of the black-jacketed figures below to raise a pistol to the back of the head of…

Cassian. It’s Cassian.

Green coat. Brown hair. Small frame, half-curled into itself in obvious pain, and it’s _Cassian_.

Her blaster is out, stance is squared, but it’s too late.

Fewer than three seconds have passed since she first spotted him. Her brain has hardly realized what has happened yet. It’s instinct. Pure, unfiltered Jyn Erso, charging out into danger to save someone, except this time it’s Cassian and except this time she’s too late.

The pistol fires.

She’s not sure what she’s seeing at first. It’s just, it’s impossible, it’s not real, it’s another one of those terrible dreams when she’s moments behind, when she _just_ misses the opportunity to save him. When she soundlessly tries to get his attention just before he takes the lullaby pill. When she breaks into his cell and finds that they’ve already killed him. Seconds too late. Heartbeats. A window of time missed by just enough to kill him.

It’s...surely this is just…surely she…

She fires her blaster to save him, because it isn’t real. She fires into the crowd and sparks a panic and misses her first shot, hitting the speechmaker in the meat of the shoulder, but she strikes the killer (the _would be killer_ , because it’s not real) with the second. Cassian topples forward, bloodied and bruised and _shot,_ facedown into the waterlogged stone street, but this isn’t real. Another anarchist shoots wildly upwards to where he thinks Jyn must be, off by fifty feet or so, aiming too low, too far to the left, and she kills him too. She will stand here and kill _every single fucking one of them._

But the others are scattering, are regrouping, are reacting like they think they’re in the middle of a much larger ambush, and they’re leaving Cassian and the other hostages – some dead, some still shackled on their knees, in the center of the square.

Her vision blurs, and she realizes that Leia is pulling her, Leia is yanking her away from the edge, fingers bruising Jyn’s arm. She pulls Jyn into her, pulls Jyn crashing against her chest with one arm wrapped around her waist, and Jyn’s back explodes with fire when she does, and it’s real, isn’t it? It’s real.  

“No!” she yells, trying to pull away, but the word doesn’t come out as the wrathful scream that exists inside her head. She hears only a strangled, keening cry, and it’s almost involuntary then, the sobbing repetition of the word that follows.

“Jyn, _please_ ,” Leia is begging, and she’s crying too. And _no_ , that means it _is_ real, that means she saw it too, and Jyn just needs to see again. She just needs to look, just to see something that might tell her that she’s wrong. It wasn’t him. That wasn’t the green jacket that Leia picked out for them. That wasn’t his brown hair, soft beneath her fingertips and always hanging into his eyes when it gets wet because he never cuts it short enough so it won’t get in his face.

“It’s not him,” she says, like a child, and she can see Saw’s furious face in her mind, hear his disdainful sneer that she’s behaving this way, but it was Cassian down there, it was _Cassian,_ and he’s gone. “Let me see!”

And Leia says, “no”, and Leia pulls her, and Leia keeps pulling her until she has no choice but to follow.

* * *

Luke is pretty sure he’d rather sleep in a pile of snow on Hoth than deal with the rain for another moment. Snow planet. Planet with endless rain. Why doesn’t anyone ever want him to tag along on a mission to somewhere with a balanced, not-crazy climate?

He almost says that aloud to Cassian, out of some impulse to make the man smile even _accidentally_. Han probably would have. Han probably would have been trying to make Cassian laugh this whole time. Han probably also would have been punched in the face by now, though, so Luke thinks his current chosen route of just silently, anxiously following the older spy is his best move.

It’s just…Luke has a hard time accepting it. And sure, that might just be shock. That’s what Han would say. Or Uncle Owen. Two of the most rational, unflappable people Luke has ever met. But Luke isn’t just anyone. Luke is a _Jedi_ , and he’s supposed to be trying to trust those instincts.

If Chirrut was here, if Ben was here, they’d say something like ‘trust in the Force’, or ‘look into your heart. What do you see?’ or that one story about the blind Bantha that made Baze laugh uproariously when Chirrut told it even though Luke _still_ doesn’t get why it was funny. But he understood the message even if he didn’t get the joke: Chirrut was telling him to pay attention to the Force instead of just relying on the way he used to look at things.

The point is that they would tell him not to dismiss this nagging feeling as just denial or shock. They wouldn’t put it down to wishful thinking, to Luke hoping that they’re still alive somehow. They would tell him to follow it to its logical conclusion: she isn’t dead. Leia isn’t dead. And if she’s still alive out there, then that probably means Jyn is too.

But does Cassian even believe in the Force? Or would he react like Han would: furious, lashing out because false hope is worse than no hope at all?

It’s the silence that does it, in the end. Crushing, brutal silence. Not all around them; no, there’s noise enough. Chaos, nearly, as they slip and scramble their way over the roof of the palace, the sounds from down below seeming strangely even louder than they did before, everything blended and terrible. It’s the silence from _Cassian_ that Luke can’t handle.

Chirrut would ask him: _what do you feel_? And he would want Luke’s answer to be instant. _Don’t think about it, it just tell me. What do you feel_?

_Afraid_ , Luke would say.

He knows he gets a lot of comments, jokes, little asides from everyone, and he knows that, at least partly, he deserves them. Yes, he has a tendency to be a bit naive, and yes, of course, they’re free to laugh at all the times he doesn’t understand peoples’ innuendos. But he’s still a Jedi. He still has the Force, like his father did. Like Ben did. He can still feel things and know that they are true.

And when he looks at Cassian, he feels afraid. Not _of_ him, although Cassian inspires a certain amount of respect that comes very close to fear with Luke a lot of the time (and, holy _shit_ , the look on his face when Luke said that horrible thing about Jyn). But, no, the fear he feels is _for_ Cassian.

He feels fear, because he knows what that look of resignation means. He knows what that ache of grief will make people do, even if he hasn’t felt it quite the way Cassian does.

It’s not well reasoned, and if he was feeling practical, measured, the way Leia tried to teach him to be, he probably would keep it to himself.

But he’s afraid, and so he says, “I don’t think they’re dead, Cassian.”

Cassian barely looks back at him. It’s a twitching expression, disapproving. Warning. His eyes sliding towards Luke and then away, back to his studious examination of the buildings around them. He probably thinks his refusal to engage Luke is a kind of magnanimous gesture: _if you drop it now, I’ll pretend you haven’t spoken at all._

“This way. The hatch is…”

“I mean it. I’m…listen to me!”

“This isn’t productive.”

“Shut up and listen!”

(For a second, he sounds so much like Leia that Cassian’s chest hurts, but he swallows it, like he has forced himself to swallow everything else).

“We don’t have time for this, and you know it,” Cassian points out. “We need to keep going. Find Baze and Chirrut. Get you off this planet before the war gets _worse_.”

Luke grabs his arm. And he _feels_ it. Not just the tension in his muscles, the rigid lines of Cassian’s body refusing to bend, so close to shattering. Luke feels the _weight_. The emotions. The crushing and yet incongruously empty press of it, a void with wind whipping through it: alive, brutal, battering.

“I feel it, Cassian. It doesn’t feel right. They’re still out there.”

Cassian pulls away, sharp, brow lowered in further warning.

“The feeling is grief,” he says, only a slight tremble of anger in his voice keeping him from being entirely blank. “You’ll get used to it.”

Luke barks a laugh, hardly felt, and somehow knows, without understanding how, that he should say, “you’re not the only one who’s lost everything.”

Cassian stiffens, his blank expression flickering, like a hologram not quite stable.

“You’re right,” he says, after a pause in which Luke thinks he’s never going to trust his instincts ever again. “But that doesn’t…”

“What do you have to lose? By trusting me. By agreeing not to give up on them just yet. What harm does it do?”

“I understand that you have certain…abilities. But you’re untrained. You don’t know what you can do, or to what extent you can do it. It isn’t about trust. It is about you wanting them to be alive, and me having to act based on what we know. Here. Through here.”

Cassian pulls open a hatch on the roof, the ladder leading down into one of the servants’ hallways, and Luke tries a final gamble: talking. Just…talking. He’s seen Bodhi do it before, babbling enough that Cassian actually has to pay attention or risk falling behind. He puts his hands squarely on Cassian’s shoulders, forcing him to make eye contact.

“I would know,” he says. “I don’t know how, or why, or what it has to do with being a Jedi. I don’t know! But listen: I would know. I would feel it if Leia were gone. I know I would.” He does his best to make his voice as confident as he can. Because it’s not like Cassian is wrong: Luke _is_ untrained. He _doesn’t_ know why or how or even really _what_ this feeling means. But he has to trust it. He _does_ trust it. “I know it’s difficult for you to believe it, but…Cassian, you have to trust me. I wouldn’t be saying this if I wasn’t sure. I almost _didn’t_ say it, even though I _am_ sure, because I know what I’m saying, and I know that you think it’s going to be easier or at least, I don’t know, less terrible if you don’t let yourself hope, but Cassian…Cassian, they’re alive. And once we get Chirrut and Baze, we need to find them.”

Cassian looks at him for a few heartbeat moments, a muscle in his jaw twitching, as if he’s holding back or trying not to say anything too harsh, anything he’ll regret.

What he finally settles on is, “Baze and Chirrut first.”

“First,” Luke says. Hearing the hesitation. Hearing the promise.

“First,” Cassian agrees, running a hand over his face. Beneath the blank expression, Luke sees it, though: a flicker of hope. A flicker of _pain_ , with it. Luke knows that this goes against everything Cassian has taught himself. Every defense mechanism to keep himself alive, whole, keep him from being dragged down by his fear and his loneliness. Luke knows this in the way he knows that Leia and Jyn are alive, in the way he knows that Baze and Chirrut are alive. Undoubting, unflinching, but also not quite understanding exactly how or why. He knows more about Cassian in this moment than he has ever known before.

“Thank you,” Luke says. It sounds a little desperate to his own ears.

“Thank me if we survive this,” Cassian replies. And finally, Luke allows himself to be led.

* * *

It isn’t as hard to find Chirrut and Baze as they were fearing. Mostly because by the time they get down to the main levels of the palace to check the cells, Baze has already half broken them out.

Following the sounds of shouting and shooting, Luke and Cassian crash around the corner expecting to find the worst, both of them with their blasters outstretched and ready, but Baze is holding an anarchist up by the throat, shoving him up against the bars of the cell they are no longer trapped in, while Chirrut stands by him, one foot resting as if for leisure on the body of another anarchist. The blind guardian’s head is tilted comically as if trying to listen to something just out of reach.

“You’ll have to speak up,” he’s saying, grinning as the anarchist makes a strangled, choking sound. “I can’t quite make that out.”

“Baze,” Cassian says, startled, and Baze grins over his shoulder.

“Captain!” Chirrut exclaims, not even pretending to be surprised to hear them. “Would you believe that this man thought he had a right to my staff? Just because he opened this cell for us and saved us from our _barbaric_ Aeronian jailers?” With mock disappointment, he turns to Baze. “I miss the Kophans. They are never so presumptuous.”

“Are you all right?” Cassian asks. Baze has a new bruise on his jaw, but aside from that they both look like they just decided to spend the day keeping warm in a cell. Then again, they tend to exude that level of comfort no matter _where_ they are.

“We’re fine. And you?”

Cassian knows he’s a coward. Still doesn’t answer the question, because he can’t bring himself to say _any_ of the words that need saying. Not about the probability of Jyn being gone. Not about the impossibility of Luke promising that she isn’t. Not about the childish, absurdly young and persistent voice trying to tell him that she _can’t_ be dead, she _can’t_ be.

“We need to get out of here,” he says. “Kill him or let him go, but we need to leave before more of them show up. There is a passage to the shops through the kitchen, if I can remember the…”

“We aren’t leaving without Jyn, I assume,” Chirrut says, still smiling. Cassian, veneer cracking just a bit more, glances over at Luke, who is smiling triumphantly.

“You feel it too, right? She’s not dead.”

“Who said she was dead?” Baze asks, slamming the anarchist against the wall with a final, shove, letting him drop limply to the ground when he’s finished. He turns on Chirrut with a mighty frown. “You said she was in _trouble_.”

“The shuttle exploded,” Cassian explains. “She and Leia were…”

“Likely halfway across the city to find you when it happened,” Chirrut finishes, taking his staff back from Baze without a word. “Yes, I agree. You never _can_ get her to sit still when there’s adventure to be had. With our comlinks down, finding them will be difficult. Finding Bodhi and K2 as well. The palace is falling around us, the alliance is lost, and we are all separated from each other. I would say this mission is a failure all around.”

“Right now, I’d gladly accept the failure, as long as Jyn is still…” Cassian starts. Predictably, he can’t quite bring himself to finish.

“She is,” Chirrut replies. All traces of amusement are gone from his tone. It’s firm, instead. Refusing to be questioned. He doesn’t usually say _anything_ without at least two layers of humor on it, which means he wants to make sure that Cassian is paying attention. “So stop looking like a lost child. I can _hear_ you making that sad look that always makes Jyn feel sorry for you, but fortunately I am immune to even your most despondent expressions.”

“Oh, please. You know that’s not true,” Baze says with a snort. “Even though you can’t see them.”

“Why must you always challenge me in front of them? You know how it hurts my feelings.” Brushing his hands off on his robes, Chirrut grins at all of them. "Well? Are we waiting for anything in particular? I think it's time for me to brave the rain again. As long as you are ready to protect me, love."

"Shut up. You know I am."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone reading and commenting :) Please comment extra hard on this chapter, as I will be enduring a full day of training tomorrow at work (nope, not starting a new job, just doing 8 hours of training for no fucking reason except bureaucracy!) and will need something to keep my spirits up during breaks!


	8. We'll Hold Them off You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I keep saying this, but I really thought I wasn't going to finish this chapter today! But here we are, and I'm thinking it might be two more chapters before the end!
> 
> Thank you all, seriously, for responding to my call for comments to keep me from losing my mind during my training today. I had myself a nice seat in the corner in which I could occasionally look at my phone, and I appreciated the distraction so much!
> 
> This is the chapter in which the "discussion of grief/mourning tag" comes in. I don't think it's anything too bad, but I've known people who need to be warned ahead of time about stuff like this, so just as a heads up, it DOES get a little dark and possibly upsetting? I don't know how to judge my own writing along that metric, so, just to be safe!

Bodhi knows that he is probably _not_ the right person for this.

Then again, Bodhi thinks that about pretty much everything.

Generally speaking, unless Bodhi is flying, or fixing things, or eating something tasty, he feels out of place. He’s always asking everyone around him if they don’t think _they_ would be better suited to doing this. Or are they sure they were thinking of _him_ when they wanted to get this done?

Except now, no one’s asking him to do anything. And that’s worse. Because that means _he’s_ making the choice. He’s deciding to do something, to trust himself to do something, and there’s no one standing right behind him, having faith in him, insisting that he can do so much more than he thinks he can.

“Okay,” he says. Pauses. “Okay. So. I just…I just have to get…into that building.”

“Yes. As we already discussed.”

K-2SO is still the worst possible companion for this, but it’s not like he has a choice. The droid is impatient, confused by all the repeated questions, and he seems like he’s more concerned with finding Cassian as soon as possible so he can complain to him about the fact that their budget had allowed him to buy only a clunker of a ship.

“Just go across a massive street, in the middle of a war, cut down that alley there, and sneak into the building they’re using as a possible headquarters, and somehow destroy the device they’ve got creating interference with our comms.”

“Yes. Well done. It seems you understand the plan. Why are you not _enacting_ the plan?”

“Does it not seem impossible to you?”

He knows he’s whining. He hears it. Jyn would give him a sad look and ruffle his hair and Cassian would heave that patient sigh and clasp a hand on his shoulder and say _something_ reassuring.

Then again, if they were here, _they_ would be the ones doing this. Jyn would make it look kickass and daring. Cassian would make it look effortless, like ‘oh, might as well infiltrate that scary building over there, just since I’m not doing anything else at the moment’. They’d dart in and out and probably one of them would get mildly shot so the other would have to be all frantic and concerned for a bit about it, but then they’d act like it was nothing.

But they aren’t here, because they’re lost out there somewhere, totally unable to find him, because of the interference, and _he_ is the only one who can stop it. He can fix everything.

“Okay,” he says again. “You can do this.”

“Stay with the ship? Yes. I think I can manage that fine, thank you.”

“I was talking to myself.”

“ _Why_ do organic lifeforms think that is a good use of their energy?”

“Never mind. Okay. I’m going to do this.”

“You keep saying that. When should I expect you to actually _do_ it?”

All right, well _that_ does it.

“Shut up,” he says, and he speeds for the door before he can change his mind.

Everyone knows that Bodhi has never been a very good liar. He’s good at babbling, most of the time. He’s gotten better at babbling on purpose instead of just because it’s the only thing he knows how to do. And it works for misdirection, mostly, unless he has the bad fortune of being caught by a person who actually knows what he’s talking about, in which case he completely freezes up and gets useless again. But lying? Straight up lying? Still not great. He can do white lies. “No, Cassian, I don’t think you’re being overprotective and ridiculous”. “Yes, Chirrut, that joke was very funny”. “No, Baze, that friendly shoulder punch didn’t actually hurt a lot”. But it’s harder when something’s on the line, when he’s nervous because the consequences of failure are _really really bad_. Then he gets all blank and says stupid shit like “I can explain this”, while…never actually explaining anything.

But this is for his family. Rogue One. He has to. Just like on Scarif, he _has_ to. This isn’t just about him. This is about them. And Leia, too, and Luke, so basically it’s about the whole entire Rebellion, which basically means it’s about the entire kriffing galaxy. Part of him balks at all that. It makes it even harder for him to think about it. But it also makes it easier to just go ahead and _do_ it.

_Have to do it. Has to be me._

The patchy uniform, military jacket, dirty, too short pants, they were all stolen from an anarchist K-2SO dragged in from the rain, and it’ll have to do. Bodhi isn’t sure it’ll be enough to hide the twitching nervousness and franticness and all around wrongness that always gets worse once he gets in a position where his nerves overtake everything else, but he’s also pretty good at remaining unnoticed and small, hunched up inside himself so peoples’ eyes slide right past him. That’s how he got out of the Empire, after all. He can do this, too.

He shuffles out of the archway of the empty private landing pad they’ve commandeered, down the long ramp to the alley, out into the street, all the while holding the stolen blaster about as awkwardly as expected, putting a bit of a limp on so it’ll be clear why he’s heading back to the headquarters, out of the storm. K-2SO’s idea. Hopefully it won’t get him killed or something. If they try to put him under a medscanner, it’s probably all over.

Luckily, the side door to the headquarters building isn’t locked. Another potential embarrassment averted before he even had the chance to worry about it. It opens easily when he bumps the controls with trembling, nervous fingers, and then he’s in a dark, dim lit hallway, and that’s good too.

It’s a bit like the Rebellion, he thinks, trying to look a little less like a spy trying to infiltrate their stronghold, leaning against a wall just inside the front foyer and pretending to catch his breath. There are people rushing back and forth, soldiers and officers and whoever else, people who clearly aren’t out fighting at all, wearing loose robes and casual clothing. Shouting at each other over maps, gesturing wildly and saying nothing that makes sense.

See? Nothing different. Just like the Rebellion. Not even as scary as the Empire because even their official uniforms look sort of comfortable. More like Saw Gerrera’s…

Nope, no, don’t think about that.

The good thing about a bunch of anarchists gathered in the same place, Bodhi supposes, is that there seems to be some ideological dissonance between various groups here. Which is great, really, because everyone’s busy arguing and they notice him even less than people usually do. He passes three different arguments about how to proceed. Someone’s going off about a display of executions in the square, someone else complaining about political prisoners being worth more than blood splatters on the street, still others arguing that they need to show that they’ve done _something_ , that they’ve made progress. A louder voice than the rest points out that this is supposed to be the Big One. No more half measures.

No one notices Bodhi. No one asks for his opinion, too busy stating their own, talking over each other about the right way to be an anarchist. It’s still terrifying, and now Bodhi adds ‘worrying that someone will ask my opinion’ to the list of things he’s afraid of, but he needs to keep going, and so he does.

He wanders through the halls, packed with voices. There’s a small medical area set up in one of the rooms he passes through. It looks like it used to be some sort of cafeteria. There’s a line stretching out of it, blood splattered doctors stalking up and down it, looking for the worst cases to take to a gurney. Bodhi eases past them on the way out, hearing stories of explosions and shootouts with government forces and two rather small women taking on ten or maybe twenty by themselves.

He smiles a bit, but he doesn’t slow down to hear more. It could be any two women, true, but it does him some good to imagine that it was Jyn and Leia. Out there somewhere, fighting. Relying on him to get this done.

Finally, _finally_ , he sees the door up ahead: blank, nondescript, unguarded, with no activity around it. Mechanical room. Maybe an electronics command center of some kind. If he was going to set up some kind of comms interference, it would be in there, with the biggest power draw.

 _You can do it, Bodhi_ , he tells himself, and it’s Galen telling him, and it’s Jyn, and it’s Cassian. _You have to do it. It’s your turn again._

* * *

Leia doesn’t know what to do.

She’s never been very good with stuff like this. Anger is easy. When people are angry, she understands them. She’s angry too. She’s almost _always_ angry too. Her restraint is one thing, carefully cultivated after years of learning to control it because her parents taught her how. It’s a powerful part of her. She can be as steely and cold as she wants to be, can be as calm and rational as she has to be. But behind her eyes and her pointed smile, there is almost always a firestorm raging through her.

Anger is good, it makes people fight, but grief?

It’s not like she’s a stranger to it. Her entire planet, her people, an entire culture and history wiped off the galactic map as a demonstration, as a punishment towards _her_. Her father with his warm smile and her mother with her brilliant, tinkling laugh, both of them gone, scattered, burst into a million pieces in front of her, and she never got the chance to say goodbye.

He would have been so worried for her, when he heard she had been captured. Had he had time to hear? She wonders, sometimes, if word had reached him before the Death Star did. Or did he die thinking ‘at least Leia is all right’? And if someone _had_ told him, did he have the time to tell Breha? Or had he kept it to himself, not wanting to upset her, trusting that Leia would find some way out of it or at least deciding to wait until morning to let her know?

Leia doesn’t know. She will never know.

Yes, she understands grief.

But grief in other people is something else. Grief is for privacy, is for closed and locked doors and the softness of a pillow silently soaking tears that no one is allowed to see. Grief is for the stuttering ache she felt when she watched General Syndulla swing her daughter up into her arms, mid-conversation, professional as always but mother-soft around the edges, and having a startling, picture-clear memory of Bail doing the same thing, when Leia was so very young. Grief is for the smile she forced, for the tears she hid, for the sobs she unleashed later, alone, where no one had to know she had let it take over.

Grief is not for seeing, grief is not for others, and she knows that Jyn believes that maybe even more than Leia does, so why won’t she force it to harden inside her into something useful? Why is she instead limp and pliant once they’re on the move again, letting Leia drag her down the alleys and streets they had only just come from? Why is she not alert and helpful, keeping watch behind them? Why is she making Leia do everything while she stumbles along behind like a child? And why can’t Leia stop fucking _crying_ about it?

They must look a sight, the pair of them, barging right back into Hinara’s clinic. The Twi’lek woman actually opens the door when Leia pounds hard enough on it, and she hardly even looks surprised to see them back. But her placid expression only lasts as long as it takes for her to realize the sorry state they’re both in. Jyn, vacant. Leia, barely biting back sobs.

“What happened?” Hinara asks. Leia tries to speak but can’t quite find the words, and Jyn just stares unfocused at the floor, her small hands clenched into smaller fists. At first, Leia thinks, _good, here it is, here’s the fierceness that I need to get me through this_ , but Jyn lets out this sobbing sound that bites off before it can be much more than a gasp of disbelief, and she’s trembling from the cold and horror and sucking in another horrible gasp like something sharp has punctured her lungs. “What happened?” Hinara asks again, more firm this time. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me!”

Leia thinks of her arm across Jyn’s stomach, the muscles tense and contracting, fighting her, scrabbling at the railing in front of her. She thinks of Cassian flopping forward into the puddled street, boneless and unmoving, blood seeping into the water around him.

It seems _impossible_.

Blaster to head.

Trigger.

Dead.

How can it be that simple? He was just here, he was just _with_ them, and now she’s supposed to believe that she’s never going to see him again?

(It’s Alderaan, there and then gone, and it’s _impossible_. That doesn’t happen. That’s an entire planet. Rivers and mountains and snowy tundras and oceans so vast that their scientists haven’t even explored the bottoms yet! It’s not _gone_. It can’t be gone!)

Jyn begins to sob in earnest, but it’s silent when she does it, one hand pressed to her mouth as she turns away to hide her face. Hinara is wearing this awful panicked expression, and it’s funny. It’s so funny. Leia clenches her jaw to keep from laughing.

“I don’t. I can’t,” Hinara says, and Leia holds up a hand, warning. Slightly imperious.

“Give us a fucking second, Hinara,” she says instead, her chest heaving.

_He’s dead. Accept it. You can’t do anything useful if you can’t accept it, and now you need to think. You didn’t see Luke down there, nor the Guardians, so you can still find them. You need to figure out…_

Hinara, bless her, must be quite a nurse: she manages to shove a waste bucket into Jyn’s arms before Jyn even makes a sound to indicate that she needs it. The awful wet noise of it is, if nothing else, bracing.

“Is it the stims?” Hinara asks, her hand hovering over Jyn’s back, thankfully having the sense not to give in to the impulse to give her a comforting rub or two.

“No,” Leia snaps. Hinara looks over at her, for some reason apparently startled by the sharpness of her tone, though Leia sees understanding flash across her face when she takes a step away from Jyn. _Oh_ , her expression says. _Someone has died. This isn’t something I can fix._ Leia wonders how much Hinara was paying attention to their earlier conversation. Wonders if she realizes it’s _Cassian_ who’s gone. “Thank you, Hinara. Just…Jyn, sit down.”

She’s expecting some of the fire, some of the rage that burns through Jyn at even the _smallest_ perceived infractions, but Jyn allows herself to be led over to one of the gurneys. It terrifies Leia. It starts this nervous little hitching to her breath. _No, no, no, come on, you need to be with me, you need to help me with this. You can’t leave me too._

* * *

Jyn is…

She’s…

There’s nothing…

It’s like her brain keeps resetting itself, reminding itself, remolding itself to try and fit the new information into it, but she _can’t_. It just keeps catching, getting stuck somewhere.

_When I find Cassian, we can…_

_The others are probably…_

_When this is all over, I’ll tell him…_

It’s like there’s something fundamentally cracked inside of her that keeps her from accepting it, incorporating it into her reality.

_Tomorrow, when I wake up, and everything is fine, and he’s there, I’ll…_

Leia’s talking with the Twi’lek nurse, and Jyn’s just…sitting here, holding this vomit-splattered bucket, dripping wet and roiling, like she’s on a wildly bucking ship. It puts in mind Scarif, taking off, the shuttle shuddering all around them, Cassian’s head in her lap, Bodhi yelling…

She vomits again, at some point, and her back is aflame, Cassian’s jacket pulling on her bandages.

Again. Stop. Stop thinking about it. Stop remembering.

Stop remembering _any_ of it. All of it. Stop remembering Jedha, his hand grabbing her arm, refusing to leave her behind. Stop remembering Eadu and his rifle, the rifle he was supposed to use to kill her father, being used to protect her, keep her from harm. Stop remembering Scarif, looking into his eyes on the elevator and thinking _it’s not enough, not enough time. I haven’t even begun to know you yet!_

_Stop thinking, stop letting it in. Push it aside, the way you always have to do. This is why you were trying to protect yourself. This is why it’s so important not to let someone in, why you have to remember. He was always going to leave. He was always going to die. You were always going to end up alone._

It’s not enough. None of it is enough. Those walls that existed inside her for years are gone, torn down. When did that _happen_? Was it the moment he died? Or have they been broken for a little while longer than that? Was it when she told him to stay? Was it when she held him on Coruscant? Was it last night in the cargo bay, feeling whole again? Or longer still? _Scarif_? Whenever it was that her defenses crumbled without a hope of repair, she’s left trying to figure out how to put them back together, and it isn’t _working_.

Keep everything in, keep your emotions hidden, don’t cry, don’t scream, don’t let them know you’re hurting. Saw’s advice, her own advice. Everything she lived, everything she experienced, told her that it was the only way for her to survive. But she can’t stop. She can’t stop crying. She hears Hinara saying that her injuries are making her ill, that she’s in trouble, that she needs medical attention, and maybe it would be less humiliating to believe that. Maybe that would be okay. But she knows it’s more than just that. Shock, maybe, but not just physical shock. Pain, but not just physical pain. Is she embarrassed? Humiliated? She can’t even tell. All of it just runs together, and…

“There’s nowhere else to go,” Leia says, and her voice breaks, and then she’s crying too. But short, choppy sobs, exactly like Jyn would expect, and she knows that the princess will pull herself together soon, because she has to. Because she always has to be strong. Jyn does too. Jyn should pull herself together. Cassian would want her to get back to the mission. Get Leia out of here.

Does it matter? Does it even matter? Cassian is dead. Gone. Just like everyone else she’s ever loved.

But that’s not true. Bodhi, drifting and lost without them, his sense of self hard to hold on to when the others aren’t around. Nightmares of Saw’s torture sending him scrambling into their presence, needing reminders, needing assurance. She thinks of Chirrut, always ready to help and give advice even though she’s so bad at taking it. And Baze, who in many ways is so much like her, hiding real affection behind a gruff exterior that claims an ability to be alone, a desire to be alone, even as he’s constantly pulling others closer. Even K-2SO, whose bizarre droid-shaped version of grief will be one of the most difficult part of this, will need her when it’s over.

No, of course it matters. He’s dead, but it still matters. They’re still her family, and she can’t shut down because they’re still in danger.

She can feel herself pulling back together, her unraveling reversing, the threads of her self coming back together into a shape somewhat similar to what it used to be. Patched and worn and imperfect, with a gaping hole in the center, but it’s something.

She doesn’t think about what she’ll do after, when it’s over, when they’re on a ship and leaving Cassian’s body facedown in the ( _stop. Stop it. Don’t think about it_ ). _After_ is a black hole. It’s a nothing. It’s not something she can afford to think about.

She can’t stop thinking of the way the pain dulls in time. Lyra. Saw. Galen. Sharp, stabbing, horrible things that kept her from sleeping at first, but as the months went by and the years went by and memories of softness and sharpness both faded into something dull, an ache that never fully went away, she learned to live with it. And it’s terrifying, actually, the idea that he will fade with the rest of them and become some hazy memory of too few nights spent pressed together in sleep, his heartbeat under her ear and his lips on her skin. He will become someone whose loss she survived. She will look back on him and smile and not feel this yawning gulf of pain, and in this moment that feels like the most horrible thing in the world, that she might ever be convinced to let go of him.

She stills it all, every tremoring, half formed worry, every panicked thought that makes her stomach clench again, though there’s nothing left for her to heave into this bucket. It was easier when she had that bunker inside her, burned away by Scarif. Easier when she could protect parts of herself. But she manages, even still, and she staggers to her feet.

“We still need,” she says, her words slurred. She swallows and tries again. “We still need to find Bodhi.”

“We don’t know where he is. Sit down. Until the comms are working, there’s nothing we can do.”

“I need to,” Jyn insists, and her voice sounds so much weaker than she wants it to. It’s a plea, like Leia’s refusal is physically painful. “I need to do something.”

“She’s in shock,” Hinara says, and Jyn’s fury could punch a hole in her.

_(“You’re in shock,” he says, and she hates him, she hates him, her father is dead because of him.)_

“Nothing has changed,” Jyn insists. “We need to get you off this planet. We shouldn’t have...We should have just…”

But she’s crying again, and that isn’t quite right, isn’t what she wanted, and Leia is suddenly pulling her into her arms. Her back is on fire, pain stabbing pinprick holes through the drugs and stims that Hinara gave her so she could go out and save the day, but she didn’t. She didn’t do anything. She just watched as he was ripped away from her.

Leia’s crying too. The cold dripping water from her hair and the warm dripping tears are two very different sensations, and it’s like permission to let go of everything. Permission to sink to her knees on the floor and drag the princess with her, wrap her arms around her, cry into the skin of her shoulder, where she finds some measure of privacy. She cries and Leia cries and poor Hinara looks mortified, but she lets them have their moment. Allows them just a few more seconds of this horrible grief before they both have to go back to being strong.

* * *

Cassian feels a cagey sort of unwillingness to go back to the ship. Like they’ll get there and he’ll see the bodies he missed seeing before.

Hope is a dangerous thing. It’s insidious, can convince you that a thing is still possible, can tear apart your heart if you let it in only to have it ripped away again. Hope can keep you going, sustain you, but if hope is all there is, if it isn’t fulfilled, it demands a price. It can make things impossible to recover from.

Then again, what does he really have to lose? If Luke is wrong…

Cassian has recovered from impossible situations before, but that’s just it: he’s not sure how many more times he can be expected to do that before he figures it’s just not worth the effort.

The palace has fallen entirely by the time they reach the landing platform. Below, the square is nearly empty but for corpses, most of the fighting force making their way through the palace and into the wealthier area of the city beyond.

Cassian needs to get his team as far from this place as he can, because now that the palace has been infiltrated, the odds of it being the target of Imperial intervention have gone up. They’ll send someone down to investigate the lack of comms traffic, and they’ll see that their puppet government has been compromised, and they’ll attack. Gleefully, even. They’ve been waiting for the excuse to clean up down here. And if _that_ happens, he and the others risk getting caught in the net. The Empire tends not to be too concerned with precision. They could be hauled off to some Imperial prison entirely by accident.

“We shouldn’t be here,” he reminds Chirrut, but Chirrut was insistent, and so now they’re all skulking around near the remains of the ship while Baze leads the blind guardian to it.

“I’m surprised you don’t smell it,” Chirrut says. He says it louder than Cassian would like, and with an irreverence that stings because it makes Cassian hope some more. Chirrut’s levity means a lot, because Chirrut cares too much for Jyn to be anything but devastated if she were truly gone, but Cassian is still so afraid.

“Smell what?” he asks, the words ground out. Chirrut’s smile turns sympathetic, but it doesn’t waver.

“Blaster discharge. Detonation. Explosion. I can smell it all. But there’s a notable absence that I would have thought you would have noticed.”

“No bodies,” Baze translates.

It’s been a long time. The bodies were burned up in the explosion. It’s raining, dampening the smell. A thousand arguments. Cassian doesn’t bother to say them, because it’s _Chirrut_.

“I have a very good sense of smell,” Chirrut says proudly. Cassian focuses on looking around, making sure they’re still alone up here, his shoulders tense, bracing himself against the inevitable blows that are sure to follow this tiny allowance of hope.

“We both do, you know,” Baze says gently, and Cassian doesn’t trust himself to speak. “He’s right. You don’t forget that smell, and it _lingers_.”

“Where do you think they went?” Luke asks. Chirrut considers, stepping into the shell of the ship, fingers trailing along one of the warped walls. When he speaks, it’s with obvious concentration.

“The explosion was an anarchist arrangement, designed as a distraction from the forces moving on the palace, correct? But Baze and I were taken to the palace cells by the guards when the ships exploded. The palace itself didn’t fall until much more recently. It is a guess, but most of this is: I do not think they went back to the palace. And I smell…something. A burn. Someone was injured, perhaps shot.”

“You said…!” Cassian starts, accusingly, but Baze levels him with a pointed look.

“Very different, singed flesh and a burning corpse. I smell it too. I know the difference too.” Baze speaks bluntly, and Chirrut nods, agreeing. He looks troubled, still, trying to get his bearings in the storm, but he sounds so confident. Cassian has to resist the urge to cling to his words like a child might.

“They must have already been out of the ship, leaving to lend their assistance to you, when the explosion occurred. That would have left them heading this way. They would have been searching for shelter.”

Chirrut indicates the stairs, leading back down into the city.

“Then we go this way,” Cassian says. He doesn’t bother with hesitation anymore. He doesn’t bother with doubt.

It’s too late to harbor himself from the hurt of dashed hopes. If she’s dead, if they’re both dead, it doesn’t matter anymore. He has already been a shell of a man, grasping on to this inane dream of one day attaining normalcy. Jyn allowed him to feel something more, to push the pain to somewhere in the back of his mind. She was the specific element of _someday_ that kept him going. Someday, maybe, if he was lucky…

If nothing else, she has led him to hope for her warmth curled against him through the night, her hands on him, her skin against his. In a kinder universe, maybe he would have cause to hope for more than that. To hope for a small house, green fields and trees around them, a child in his arms. But Jyn, just _Jyn_ , she would be enough.

If he doesn’t have that? If this is over, if she’s gone? It’s too late. He might as well do everything in his power to cling to even the barest of hopes.

* * *

Bodhi doesn’t run back to the ship, though it’s a near thing. It’s more of an awkward jog, and he convinces himself that he could _easily_ just be trying to get out of the rain. Convinces himself that no one’s watching, and even if they _were_ , they totally wouldn’t suspect anything.

He ducks into the alley and up the ramp to their private landing pad. K-2SO is waiting in the door to the ship, taking Bodhi in. Cassian and Jyn both seem to have an idea, somehow, of what K-2SO is _thinking_ , or what he’s sort-of-feeling, based on the movements in his droid face, but Bodhi hasn’t been blessed with that ability, and so he always assumes that K-2SO is looking at him _critically_. Except this time, he’s _pretty_ sure he’s right about that.

“I’m guessing it didn’t go well,” K-2SO says. He _sounds_ blank, unconcerned, and it’s a strange contrast with the wildly thudding heartbeat in Bodhi’s ears.

“What? No, it went fine. Sort of. Um. I found the device. Kind of.”

“Kind of.”

“Well, I found its backup power supply. I could’ve unplugged it there, but it wouldn’t have done any good and may have set off an alarm or seven, so I left it for now. But I figured it out.”

“Figured what out?”

“Where it is.”

“Is there a reason you haven’t already told me?”

“It’s on the roof.”

“The _roof_.”

“K…”

“You want to climb onto the roof?”

“No, of course I don’t want to. But I think I might have to. Well, it won’t be so difficult. There are stairs up the side. Not great ones. Sort of metal and rusty and probably scary to climb? But the real problem is it’s going to be obvious. Maybe getting up won’t be an issue, but getting _down_? Once they figure out the comms are back, they’re going to know exactly where to look, and there’s only one way off! The stairs don’t even pass by a window I could, you know, slip through or something. There’s no way I’ll get down before they’re starting up. Even if I was way faster than I am.”

“Is there no other way?” K-2SO asks.

“No. No other way. I…I checked, all right? So I’ve just…I’ve got to get…” he hastens around the ship, looking for the right tools. Not that he really _needs_ tools, necessarily. He could just rip the thing to shreds. Maybe a crowbar is necessary, but anything else? He needs a comlink, sure, but once he’s got that in hand it’s mostly just stalling.

K-2SO can tell. Bodhi can tell that he can tell, because K-2SO is just sort of watching him work, watching him putter around the ship like an absolute buffoon, looking for the right tools in the right places, watching him gradually remember that this isn’t Rogue One, isn’t even the Aeronian shuttle that he flew to get them here. This just some random ship, and nothing is _in_ the right places, and it’s like Jedha all over again because he’s _alone_.

Not alone. K-2SO is here, after all.

But alone. Baze and Chirrut and Cassian and Jyn aren’t here. They aren’t here. And he has to help them.

Deep breaths, Bodhi.

He clutches the kyber crystal around his neck and takes a few shaking breaths that are really more like drowning gulps for air, but they do they trick.

“I’m coming with you,” K-2SO says. He’s holding a blaster, suddenly. Bodhi has to double-take. Where does this droid keep getting _blasters_?

“What? No, you can’t. You’ll rust, first of all. Even _with_ the poncho. It’ll be windy up there, and it might take a while. And you’re a discontinued model now. You need to be careful.”

“You’re a discontinued model too,” K-2SO points out, snippy, defensive. “And I won’t rust. You won’t let me.”

They stare at each other like that for a long time, K-2SO waiting and Bodhi thinking.

“All right,” he says finally, and he can see the way that the droid relaxes, some of the tension in his joints easing now that he knows he’s going to be allowed to help. “Any odds on this actually working?”

“I think you would prefer not to hear them.”

“I figured, yeah.”

“They’re not good.”

“No, definitely figured that. Thanks.”

“You are welcome.”

* * *

There’s no plan. There’s no way to get in contact with anyone. Jyn actually _does_ have an idea of trying to find the source of the interference, but she’s not sure how she would even do that (Bodhi would know. Bodhi would know exactly what to do), and Hinara doesn’t have any equipment in her clinic that would let them do that anyway. So basically what’s left is waiting for one side to win the battle.

Jyn normally isn’t very good at waiting. But right now? She’s almost relieved. She was frantic to get away, to get out there, but that need has passed. It’s gone now. She’s not sure she’d be able to handle anything anyway. She lets Hinara get another look at her burns on her back – but that sets her off again, because she has to take off her jacket to do it, and then she looks down at the worn leather and she starts crying for him all over again.

That sets Leia off, too. They’re a mess.

Leia paces, floats ideas that Jyn has to shoot down because they’re too dangerous, too impractical, too ludicrous. Most of them are ideas that she would probably try out, if she was on her own, but she isn’t.

Cassian would probably be proud of her for thinking of the Rebellion.

Cassian would probably…

_Stop thinking about him._

She buries her face in the jacket when she has to bend over so Hinara can change her bandages. It smells like him, like the skin between his neck and his shoulder, where she presses her face when she hugs him most desperately.

 _Hugged_.

No, she’s not ready for that yet, not ready for past tense yet. Not ready to…

“Jyn.”

Leia’s voice, cutting through the momentary panic, and Jyn looks up at her, breathing heavily, her skin still damp with rain. She’s cold. She’s so cold, wearing nothing but the dead man’s pants and the bandages wrapped around her torso. But she can’t bring herself to care. Can’t bring herself to do anything about it. What does it matter? What does it matter if she’s cold?

“ _Jyn_.” Leia’s bending close to her again, giving up on her pacing for now. Jyn looks away, not wanting to see it. Not wanting to see her own devastation reflected even a little bit in Leia’s face. “Jyn, look at me.”

“I can’t,” Jyn says. Her teeth are clenched together, and she swallows a lump that rises in her throat, threatens to choke her. “I can’t...I can’t do any of this, Leia. I can’t.”

“I know,” Leia says. She’s kneeling in front of Jyn now, her hands on Jyn’s legs, balanced there, grounding her, squeezing reassuringly. Trying to remind Jyn: _I’m here. I’m here with you. You aren’t alone_. But it can only do so much. Jyn wishes she _were_ alone, because at least then she would be allowed to break. “I know this is _impossible_ , Jyn. I know it is. But it gets easier.”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Jyn hisses, shoving her chair back to try and escape Leia’s touch, shaking her head. She doesn’t want to have to explain the horror that clogs her throat, but the tears that are spilling over her eyelids do that for her, keep her from having any hope of hiding it. “I don’t want it to be easier.”

Leia’s smile trembles too much to be anything but a monumental effort, and it’s crooked, sideways, knowing. She bows her head in front of Jyn and lets out a heavy breath.

“I know,” she says. “Sometimes I wake up and I think ‘maybe today I’ll have breakfast with my mother. I haven’t seen her in a while’. And then I feel this awful… _horror_. Because I forgot. There was a time when I thought the pain would swallow me whole, but sometimes I forget, and I’m not sad anymore, for hours at a time. And I should be sad. It feels like I should be carrying my grief with me everywhere I go, but sometimes I don’t. I know you know what that’s like. You know exactly what that’s like. You’ve lost your parents too. That’s how it works.”

“I can’t talk about this,” Jyn insists, her chest heaving again. Not with the vomit of earlier, but with sobs that wrack her entire frame. Leia surges up on her knees and pulls Jyn into a rough, painful hug, fingers digging into Jyn’s back, the pain almost welcome against the nothing inside her gut. “I can’t lose him. I can’t.” _But I have. I’ve lost him. Oh, fuck, he’s gone._

“I know. I know. I’m sorry.”

“I told him it wasn’t enough on Coruscant. I told him…I almost ruined everything. How fucking…isn’t that the stupidest fucking thing you’ve ever heard?” She’s crying now in earnest, and that’s the only reason she keeps talking; she’s pretty sure _no one_ will be able to understand what she’s saying. It’s absolute nonsense. “I had him. He was with me. He never would have left, and even if he did…even if he did, at least I would have had him at all. How could I not have realized? How could I have thought it mattered at fucking all if I thought he loved me enough?”

“He did,” Leia promises, her lips in Jyn’s hair as she holds her. Unlike before, Leia isn’t sobbing the way Jyn is. She’s strong, now. Already pulling herself together. Jyn would love to be able to do the same, but she’s still grasping at the threads of her sanity, still pulling herself together, still trying to keep herself feeling _whole_. It’s like she’s holding a fistful of herself in a gale-force wind, watching the threads drift in the breeze, trying to keep everything together. “Jyn, I know he did. Of course he did.”

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t _matter_ what Cassian felt, because he doesn’t feel anything anymore. Jyn thinks she’s going to vomit again, but she doesn’t feel the sharp punch in her stomach. Just a low, heavy nausea in her gut, as if the very unfairness of the fact that she’s here while he’s gone is making her sick.

He should be here instead. He has the Rebellion. He has his work. He has things tethering him to this fight and to life and to everything that she has never quite managed to feel. What does she have? What does she have now but too-few memories of happiness?

She’s unraveling again. The pieces she was so careful about putting back together are scattering, are losing focus. She tries to force herself to think of the others. Think of Bodhi and Baze and Chirrut and K-2SO. _They need me. They_ need _me._

Leia jumps, suddenly, as if someone has pinched her, and Jyn pulls away from her embrace to look at her, expecting another idea, something that Jyn will inevitably have to shoot down for being too risky to the princess. But Leia instead cocks her head to one side, her brow furrowing.

“Bodhi,” she says. “It’s Bodhi, on the comms.”

Jyn’s comlink, shoved into Cassian’s jacket pocket, comes out, fingers trembling as she puts it in her ear.

“…trapped on the roof, expecting, uh, a lot of angry people coming up here. If anyone can hear me? Please?”

“Bodhi, where are you?” Leia barks, and Bodhi’s response is, at first, just a shaky exhale.

His voice distorted by the sound of the storm, he relays his location. Hinara points them in the right direction, indicating a tall building two streets over, a weird decorative spire on the roof. Just distant enough that Leia and Jyn both have to squint up at it, trying to spot Bodhi. It’s impossible, obviously, too far even if the visibility wasn’t next to nothing, and it isn’t like they can see any movement, anyone going after him, but Jyn still feels the urgency tick up as if they saw an entire _platoon_ of people on the roof.

“We’re going, right?” Jyn asks, already standing up.

“Start down!” Leia says, practically shouting. Hinara helps Jyn back into her jacket, rattling off warnings as she injects her with another stimshot. Just enough to keep her going for a while longer, though she insists that it won’t last as long as the last one. Jyn waves her off. “We’ll be there in a second, we’ll hold them off you.”

The adrenaline floods Jyn’s system, counteracting the numbing effect of the painkillers, making her skin itchy and hot, her face flushed with energy. She can tell already that Hinara was right, that this surge won’t last very long, but hopefully it won’t need to. All they need to do is rescue Bodhi. Save Bodhi. Help Bodhi.

And after? It still spreads out in front of her: a question, a blankness, a field of stars with no destination in sight. Cassian’s hair soft beneath her fingertips and then water-logged and dripping blood on the stone street below him. What is there to hope for for tomorrow?

After doesn’t matter. She can’t let it.

She zips up Cassian’s jacket, over the bandages, catching a whiff of his scent as she does, but it doesn’t send her into tears again, the way it did before. The ache in her stomach is still heavy, but she doesn’t let it derail her again. She can’t afford to. Bodhi needs her.

* * *

“This way!” Luke yells from up ahead, pointing. It’s that one! The spire on top, see?”

Cassian can scarcely believe the voice in his ear, and he finds himself smiling wider than he has in years.

 _We_ , Leia had said. _We’ll hold them off you._

“What did I tell you, Captain?” Chirrut calls from somewhere behind them. “Don’t wait for us! Go find her!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for putting up with this madness that is once-a-day posting 7k word chapters! And thank you as always for reading and commenting and kudosing!


	9. She's Going to be Fine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I finally missed a day in my binge-posting! In my defense, it was a very busy day. 
> 
> I'm THINKING one more final chapter, kind of an extended epilogue, but it might stretch into two if I continue being unable to edit down. I did my best to not make this a cliffhanger, even though by nature of this chapter, it kind of is one. But it's as gentle as a cliffhanger as I could possibly make it

It’s sort of funny: Bodhi never realized that he was afraid of heights.

It’s mostly funny because he’s a _pilot_. He’s a pilot! Heights is the whole deal, the whole job. But when he’s in a ship, his mind is on other things. Takeoff procedures and landing procedures and making sure that odd rattling noise from under the console doesn’t become a problem. It’s like his brain folds the fear up tight and shoves it aside into some corner. There’s just so much else to do! He doesn’t have time for that.

But now, there’s no ship around him. And he’s already gone and done the only remotely technical thing he had to do, and even _that_ was just flipping a switch to get the comms back and then letting K-2SO smash the device to bits just in case. It’s just him, Bodhi, standing on the roof, staring down at the ground, his hand for some reason refusing to release the grip he has on the railing so he can start down the stairs.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Walk down the stairs? Chance of falling is pretty low. The stairs held he and K-2SO fine on the way up, so they probably won’t collapse on the way down. Stand here frozen on the roof? Chance of getting shot is at a solid one hundred percent. He tries to bargain with himself in that way, tries to present himself the evidence rationally, just like every time when he has to do something his brain does not want him to do, but it takes a monumental effort to even slide one foot down onto the top stair.

K-2SO is absurdly patient. Or maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s talking shit right now and saying the usual snide things and Bodhi just can’t hear him because his blood is doing that funny rushing thing in his ears that always sort of makes him sick because it makes him think of the Bor Gullet, and _didn’t I tell you not to think about that?_

At least climbing up, he could keep his eyes on the sky. Looking at his feet is entirely different. Near impossible. Is the ground _really_ that far down? Did he really climb _that_ many steps to get here? But Leia told him to start down, and that means that the others are coming for him. We, she said, and it sends a flood of pictures through his mind, reminds him who _we_ is. His family, his friends. The first time he did this much to help them, they weren’t even really his friends, but they are now. They’re his people, and they aren’t going to let him fall.

“Are you going to be able to do this?” K-2SO asks him finally, his voice boosted loud over the rain, sounding mighty and yet, Bodhi imagines, a bit concerned. Possibly wishful thinking, but he’s going to take every bit of comfort he can get right now.

“Yes,” Bodhi replies, even though he’s not sure that’s true, and he can’t even lie about _this_ effectively, because his voice is trembling. “We have to do it. We don’t have a choice.” That’s better. More honest. Helps clear the fog a little bit. Things are always easier for him to do if he knows he doesn’t have a choice about them.

_Remember_. _You did it. You finished the hard part. You did what you had to do. Even though it was terrifying, you climbed up here and you destroyed their jammer thing, and you saved the day._

“Are we actually going to go now?” K-2SO wonders.

“ _Yes_. Give me a second,” Bodhi hisses.

Down below, down the street, his eyes trailing up the length of road that’s visible around the building next to this one, he can see two figures rushing through the storm. It’s only a brief glance, a tiny moment in which the rain stops enough so that he can actually see. Leia and Jyn, running down the steeply inclined street, coming to help him. K-2SO is behind him. The others will be on their way. Okay. _Okay_. He can do this.

* * *

Jyn spots Bodhi’s small frame first, winding down the rickety staircase that clings to the side of the building in front of them. The wind prevents it, of course, but she imagines that she can _hear_ the creaking metal screeching as he scrambles. K-2SO plods behind him, and the staircase jolts a tiny bit with each thud of his foot, and she might literally stop breathing if she keeps watching them, might stop moving as if to somehow avoid being the impossible tipping point in ripping that unsteady structure right from the stone.

She looks back, makes sure the street behind them is still clear, and she puts on a burst of speed. The stimshot is doing its job, keeping her from slowing down even though her head is swimming and her hands are shaking. And it’s easier, like this, with something to do. A goal to move towards. The adrenaline has a purpose, and she can allow herself to fall back into the kind of thoughtless efficiency that has seen her survive every fight she has ever been in.

Leia’s close behind her, boots slapping the wet pavement with the same speed and urgency, and Jyn takes comfort in that, because somehow she finds that despite half-hating the princess sometimes, something has changed between them. They have been unspeakably vulnerable together, and now there’s almost no one that she would trust to have her back more.

They’re two buildings down when the door opens. It’s a discreet enough building, a discreet location in the Lower Mair that doesn’t stand out as being too run-down or too well-kept. Most of the buildings around them are similar: abandoned, or stuffed with war refugees. She briefly wonders if any of the other buildings are housing anarchists, if they’re going to find themselves surrounded, trapped. But it’s too late to approach this with caution. Six hooded figures appear from within, heading for the stairs on the side of the building with a single-minded purpose that tells Jyn there’s no chance they’re just heading out to go fight somewhere else. No, they’re going after Bodhi.

Jyn fires first, but Leia’s barely half a second behind. They move to opposite sides of the street without having to speak the plan aloud: Jyn to the left, across the street from the headquarters building, and Leia to the right, pressing up against the building just next door. Jyn draws the fire, slotting easily into the scant cover provided by a doorway, poking her head out to fire frequently. Two of the anarchists try to use the firefight as a distraction to get up the stairs, but Leia brings them down without trouble.

“Bodhi, you’re running out of time!” Leia yells into the comlink. “Hurry it up!”

Jyn doesn’t hear his reply, the comlink having fallen from her ear in the scramble, but she can imagine the slightly indignant, shaky response, and it makes her frightened for him all over again.

She looks, eyes flickering up to the building, and catches sight of him trying to crouch and run at the same time, K-2SO lumbering behind. He’s okay. He’s still okay. It brings some fire back, steadies her aim, keeps her feeling refreshed.

The six anarchists are quickly taken care of, but Jyn can see more inside, probably discussing how they’re going to handle the ambush. Yet again, she and Leia are being confused for a much larger force. It’s the best possible way to handle a situation like theirs ( _make ten men feel like a hundred,_ she hears, before she chases the thought away), but it won’t last long. If they could move, duck between buildings and climb stairs of their own, keep the anarchists disoriented, make blaster bolts appear from everywhere at once, maybe they’d stand a chance at selling the illusion for longer. But they’re here to make sure Bodhi’s okay, and she won’t risk leaving his line of sight for any amount of time.

“Come on, come on,” Jyn mutters, too afraid to look away from the door, though she’s itching to see where Bodhi is now, to track his progress, to make sure he’s okay.

The ship that flies overhead, skimming just over the tops of the buildings, is a surprise to everyone. Especially when it opens fire, lighting up the sky with green, one bolt slamming into the front of the anarchist building, doing very little damage, the other skidding just past it, chipping off some stone on the corner. But it’s only the first ship, and Jyn knows how this goes. Leia does too, apparently.

“TIEs!” she hollers across the road, barely audible with the screaming of the ship overhead.

The second ship misses the headquarters building entirely, bolts slamming into a building down the street, and the ground beneath them shakes. Jyn thinks the TIE has taken the building down at first – she’s not going to look. She can’t look. Can’t take her eyes away from the door – but then Leia is swearing loud enough to be heard across the street, yelling, “AT-ST! Jyn, get over here!”

Bodhi’s finally getting close, his blurry features coming into focus as he turns the corner and makes it down another level. His footsteps stutter when he sees the walker down the street, and Jyn can’t take it anymore, can’t _not_ look, and so she turns, crosses the narrow space of the doorway and braces herself against the opposite wall. She’s exposed to the anarchists like this, but better them than the walker.

She doesn’t try to stop the cursing that falls from her lips when she sees the AT-ST. It’s not alone: a formation of Stormtroopers follows behind, as if _herding_ the walker towards the anarchists.

She remembers a moment on Coruscant, lost to her before now, standing against the window of their apartment and looking down into the street. There was a parade, and Lyra was angry, whispering harsh words to Galen, her arm sweeping out in a big gesture like she was yelling at him. Jyn remembers pressing her hands to the glass. Seeing the AT-STs walk their strange, ambling walk.

“What are they?” she remembers asking.

“What?” Lyra and Galen both turned to her, argument forgotten, and Jyn pointed, mashing her finger up against the glass.

“Those. Are they friendly?”

Galen walked closer, looked down into the street to figure out what she was talking about, and Jyn could remember his laugh, the sound of it, the surprised bark as he turned over his shoulder to look at Lyra, still standing in the middle of the living room. His voice was near apologetic when he said, “she’s talking about the walkers.”

Lyra laughed too, and Jyn felt the pride of having made it happen.

“There are men in there, Stardust,” Galen said, picking her up. “Those are not animals. They are machines. Like what papa makes.”

“And no,” Lyra said, joining them at the window, arms folded across her chest. “They aren’t friendly.”

Those AT-STs are years ago, now, as is the Jyn who didn’t know them for what they were. They’re brutally destructive, firing with the kind of power that can send whole formations flying, can take down speeders, can blast a hole straight through your middle if you aren’t careful. You don’t fuck around with AT-STs. You barely even stay in cover with AT-STs, because they’ll turn the stone to rubble and get to you as easily as if you were standing right in front of them.

The street to Leia and Bodhi isn’t particularly wide, but it’s a risk. It’ll be _more_ of a risk if the anarchists start pouring out of that building, because then she’ll be dodging a two-way firefight instead of a one-sided one.

That’s about as much thought as she gives it.

The AT-ST takes a couple of shots, pauses, takes a few more. Jyn knows the pattern intimately after years of dodging them with Saw. It’s not even shooting at anything in particular: just wildly aiming at the buildings around them, blasting holes in the sides of buildings that might have people hiding inside them, and Jyn is so fucking angry she almost opens fire on it, except that would be pointless, would get her killed, and Bodhi still needs her.

She waits for the right moment, just after it fires, and then she runs.

She makes it, nearly collides with Leia as the princess hugs the side of the building, running down the sidewalk, ducking into the alley just at the foot of the stairs. They make it with _seconds_ to spare, and the AT-ST fires, striking the street just in front of the door, striking the building beside them, sending chips of stone into a cloud around them, striking the side of the headquarters building, tearing the lowest level of the stairs straight off the side. The metal structure crumbles, screeches, falls along with the detritus from the now-gaping hole in the side of the headquarters.

Jyn and Leia are both shouting warnings to each other when it happens, crashing together in an effort to shield each other, and they end up cowering against the building just next to the headquarters, both of them looking up, naked fear on both their faces. Bodhi is just above the blast, but the aftermath has shaken him, and he’s teetering on the edge. For a heartstopping moment as Jyn and Leia clutch each other in mutual horror, he’s falling, losing balance, still a whole floor up, but K-2SO grabs him by the collar of his jacket and pulls him back.

The immediate terror fades, but it isn’t over yet, and Jyn realizes: he’s going to have to jump. A bit more controlled than falling, less likely to impale himself on any of the twisted metal beneath him, but still so _far._

Still, she yells, “jump!” because he doesn’t have a choice.

There’s a moment where she doesn’t think he’ll do it. The AT-ST will fire again, knocking him loose, and then he will fall wrong, will be hurt too deeply to be helped, and then he will be dead too. But no, not Bodhi. The frozen fear is only temporary, and he swallows it, and he jumps.

It isn’t all that far, but he has to jump _out_ , has to focus on landing away from the remains of the staircase, and he lands hard on one leg. Jyn can see his knee buckle under him through the violent haze of battle, that slowed-down vision of everything happening all around her that sets her teeth on edge, has her feeling far too slow, has her noticing ten things that need doing even as she knows that she’s only going to be able to do one in the amount of time that she has.

Behind them, in the street, the AT-ST is firing again. This time its shots hit nearer to the front entrance, and Jyn realizes that the anarchists are emerging.

One of them shoots off a rocket, and the boom of it is everything for a moment, blocking out the rest of the world. Leia screams – Jyn can hear that, barely – and she shoves Jyn forward, further down the alley, towards Bodhi. Jyn’s view of the street outside is tunneled now, is a doorway of information. Anarchists take up positions in the mouth, facing the street, hardly even glancing back at them. Bigger fish and all that. The rocket must have missed, because the AT-ST fires again, followed by screams.

Leia gets into a guarding stance, blaster primed against her hip and ready to fire if any of the anarchists try to give them trouble, and it gives Jyn the chance to go for Bodhi, to help him struggle to his feet.

K-2SO isn’t far behind, dropping gracefully, crunching into the rubble of the stairs, his feet crushing the thin, broken metal beneath them.

He’s wearing a poncho and carrying a blaster, and he’s got his hood up. More time needs to be devoted to that except Cassian is still dead, Jyn remembers, and there’s no time for it to be funny because she’s too afraid that K-2SO and Bodhi are next.

“Get up!” she says, desperate, grabbing Bodhi under the arm and throwing all her weight into pulling him to his feet. He cries out, a sickening sound that makes her stomach lurch, a sound she’s only ever heard in her worst dreams, but she needs to keep him moving.

It’s Scarif again, Cassian faltering, hissing, curling into her side like he thought it would help stem the pain, and…

“Come on!” she says, and it’s a sob and a curse all at once, and she hauls Bodhi along with her, even deeper into the alley, towards the bend where it cuts around the headquarters. They find their footing just as Leia opens fire on an anarchist who turns on them, but then the AT-ST fires, and the bolt slams through the building next to them, and the world _explodes_.

Shards of concrete and stone, brick flinging chips of itself into the air and peppering Jyn’s side, the back of her neck, and Bodhi cries out again, ducking, stumbling. K-2SO joins Leia as the dust swirls around them, holding back the anarchists who now find themselves with nowhere to go, their escape route from the AT-ST cut off by the angry princess and the giant droid in a fucking _poncho_.

“Go! Go!” Leia yells, and Jyn does. She’s holding onto Bodhi so tightly that it hurts the joints in her fingers. Together, they limp around the corner, and Bodhi is stammering, saying “this way, turn left, it’s down here. The ship, it’s across this…”

They’re only a few feet into the street when she hears it, somehow over the ringing in her ears and the sounds of the storm and the battle from behind them, and it’s _instinct._

It’s instinct, same as it was instinct when she threw herself on Leia to block her from harm. She wrenches free of Bodhi, slams the heels of her hands into his chest, sends him sprawling back, and the shot from the _second_ AT-ST, shuffling up the street ( _two fucking AT-STs?_ she wants to scream. _Seriously_!?) misses them both. But AT-ST blasts aren’t just meant for piercing, and the force of it sends her flying back into the road, away from him.

“Jyn!” she hears him call, and everything is white with pain from where her back hit the ground, but she knows she has to get up. The AT-ST fires again, but the bolt sears over her head. She follows it, her head turning, and she watches as the anarchists advancing from the opposite direction scatter, screams wrenching forth from the ones who didn’t move fast enough. Bodhi is crouched in the mouth of the alley, hands held out to her, and she has this hyperreal memory of her father crouched on the other side of the room, one of her stuffed toys in each hand, in the exact same pose Bodhi is in now. _Just a few steps_ , he had said. _Come on! You can do it, Jyn._

She rolls, her back screaming out, and she lurches to her feet, and she scuttles gracelessly back into the alley, half-falling into him into Bodhi, a stumbling collision that turns into a desperate embrace.

Jyn looks. She really does. She considers their options. The fact that she doesn’t find any isn’t for lack of trying. It’s just the way it is: they’re trapped in this L-shaped alley behind the anarchists’ stronghold, and unlike Kopha there are no doors to break down. There are no ladders to climb. All they can do is hope.

Leia and K-2SO come sprinting around the corner, and they slide to a stop as they take in Bodhi and Jyn huddled near the street. Bodhi’s arms are still around Jyn, and she realizes vaguely that _he_ is holding _her_ up this time. And that leads to the vague realization that his voice too fast and too frantic to understand except that she knows it means she has to stay awake. And she knows that _that_ means that Hinara’s stimshot is wearing off. They _need_ to get to the ship, except they can’t, because there are two fucking AT-STs on either side of this alley, and because the Imperials have chosen this moment to invade the city, and…it’s starting to get harder for her to care about any of this.

“She’s fading,” Leia says, and K-2SO’s head makes this creaking sound as he whips it around to look at her.

“She is fine,” he insists, and he sounds _defensive,_ and Jyn almost wants to laugh.

_Just wait until you find out that Cassian’s dead. That he’s dead and I’m still here. You won’t be so quick to defend me_ then _, will you?_

“She’s not _fine_. I knew I should have grabbed an extra stimshot. We gotta make a run for it.”

“That’s what I’m _saying_ ,” Bodhi insists, though Jyn doesn’t remember him saying anything of the sort. She makes herself more comfortable, tucked in his embrace, the way he’s half-cradling her like she’s a child. Except she’s not a child, not anymore, not for a long time, and this is a warzone, and... “It’s right across there. We just have to…”

The AT-ST stomps into view. From here, from so close, it seems so much _bigger_ than it did only moments before. It wakes Jyn a bit from her stupor, and she clutches Bodhi a little tighter. She’s injured, fading fast, but she still feels this ingrained sense that she needs to protect him.

His arms tighten around her, and she thinks that he might be thinking the same thing. Thinking that he needs to keep her safe. There’s warmth, a little bit. A little bit of _after_ fades into existence, shapes itself into something. She still has Bodhi. She is not alone.

As the AT-ST and its accompanying troops head by, none of the rebels do _anything_. It might be funny later, but there’s something about being faced with something so big, so powerful. It’s paralyzing. It’s the Death Star on Jedha all over again, the destructive wave washing over them.

Not that it matters much. The AT-ST walks right past them.

The three of them are holding their breaths – even K-2SO seems like he’s in some kind of low-power mode, utterly frozen in place. But the walker just keeps going, keeps firing.

Because that’s the thing: they’re not important today. They’re not targets. They’re just potential collateral damage.

Usually, this would infuriate her. She would demand their attention. She would want them to regret letting her stand aside, slide by, unnoticed and unremarked upon. But she’s just so _tired_. She watches the AT-ST pass, watches the troopers pass, and she’s grateful for the peace.

It lasts, maybe, five more seconds.

From behind them, then, the forgotten-about anarchists. They’re retreating from the other AT-ST at the cross street, or maybe they’re mounting a charge. Either way, Leia yells, “go!” again, and Bodhi is pulling Jyn up, pulling her arm over his shoulders, telling her she needs to run.

She does, she thinks. Maybe it’s not the fastest she’s ever moved, but it’s _something_. It’s a shuffling, ambling sort of run, her legs responding while the rest of her fights against it, desperately wants to sleep. Bodhi is yelling something, K-2SO and Leia firing at the troopers who turn around to engage them. The street seems impossibly, comically wide. But they cross it.

She and Bodhi both careen into the wall of the building across the street, both of them off balance as more TIE fighters scream overhead, firing into another knot of anarchists. The heavy bass of the AT-STs firing, the screams of the bolts flashing through the air, the shuddering of the earth as they walk and as wildly-thrown thermal detonators explode all down the street, it’s an overload, a painful cacophony, a reminder that they aren’t _safe_. That they have to keep going. Bodhi manages to maneuver them into the alley, and Jyn has this sickening urge to laugh at the amount of effort it took just to cross a single street.

More TIE shots clip the side of the building, raining rubble down.

“Where _are they_?” Bodhi asks, loud in her ear, breath trembling, fingers tight around her shoulder like he thinks he’s the only thing keeping her standing. “Come on, K. Come on.”

This time, the explosion of concrete is too close, too near to them, and the shards of brick too piercing. It wakes Jyn up, reminds her of what they have to do. Bodhi cries out when he ducks his head to block her from harm, and she pushes him back, deeper into the alley.

“Get the ship fired up,” she yells over the sounds of battle. He hesitates, but he knows she’s right. He points, finger trembling as he does, back into the alley, where she can see a cluster of residences, several archways.

“It’s in the landing pad in that courtyard!” he shouts back. “Up the ramp. Please hurry!”

She waits until he’s turned and started running before she sags against the building beside her, readying her pistol. She takes in her state dispassionately. Fingers shaking. Legs wobbling. Breath short. Back in considerable pain. It’s not the worst physical condition she’s ever been in before a fight, but it’s certainly not the best.

She prefers close quarters combat, but that’s out. Adrenaline rush or no, she won’t last long like this. She therefore swings out towards the troopers, bracing against the corner of the building for support, eyes seeking out her companions in the maelstrom.

Leia and K-2SO are hunched in the doorway of a building up and across the street, somehow farther away from this spot than they were when Jyn left them, both of them looking rattled but functional. Leia has a cut over one eyebrow, and there’s a steady trickle of blood marring her features. K-2SO has gone nearly white with plaster dust. Jyn raises her fingers to her lips and forces out a loud whistle.

By some miracle, Leia hears it, and she turns, makes eye contact, nods, understanding Jyn’s unspoken offer of covering fire. She says something to K-2SO, and then she wastes no time: she sprints out into the open.

Jyn doesn’t let her down, doesn’t fail her. Even with her head swimming, her aim is true. K-2SO backs across the street towards them, firing as well, and he’s quickly with them, the three of them falling back. They aren’t the targets, are nothing more than just three nearly unnoticeable thorns in the sides of the Imperial troops, and soon they’re all out of the line of fire in the alley.

But Jyn knows better than to assume that something is over just because it seems like it should be, so it isn’t even much of a surprise when they get into view of the ramp and see a group of anarchists charging up it.

Like everything else in the past few minutes, it’s obviously an accident. The anarchists are looking for somewhere to go, and the raised courtyard in which Bodhi’s landing pad sits is closed off, bottlenecked, and it will give them a good line of sight. They aren’t after Bodhi, aren’t after the ship, and yet _again_ , they are endangering what little Jyn has.

She boils under the unfairness of being dragged, over and over, into this battle. This isn’t her fight. This isn’t the fight the Rebellion wanted. This is just the bad luck of trying to do business in a city on the brink of war. It’s a miscalculation. A bad decision. They shouldn’t have even _taken_ this mission, and now they’re here, trapped, torn apart.

It’s an accident. Cassian died for an accident.

She takes her pain out on the people who are charging up the ramp, towards Bodhi. She fires on them, brings them down, rips them from their loved ones they way they have ripped Cassian from her. She yells at Leia to move, tackles the princess out of the way when a rifle raises in her direction without the younger woman’s notice. K-2SO barrels through the surprised fighters, swinging his rifle with all his strength and tearing through them, bringing them down. Jyn covers him, follows him, and the three of them fight their way up towards the ship, up to Bodhi, and Jyn goes nearly boneless with relief when she sees his face through the viewscreen, shouting into his comms.

She feels a strange, final sort of peace even before it happens.

He’s okay. And Leia is okay. And K-2SO is okay. That’s the best she can do. She doesn’t know where Chirrut and Baze and Luke are. She _knows_ where Cassian is. But the comms are back up, and Bodhi can fix everything that can still be fixed. It won’t ever be okay (why did she take this mission, why didn’t she just turn it down, why were they even _here_ …), but maybe it will be as okay as it possibly can be.

It’s not that there isn’t any fight left in her. Painkillers or not, injury or not, grief or not, there will always be fight in her. Losing Cassian wouldn’t make that fight go away, even if it makes her afraid to face the after, the dwindling adrenaline and necessity of planning for a future she wants no part of. No, there’s fight. The blast from the AT-ST, scraping its way down the alley after another wave of anarchists, slamming into the ramp just beside her, sends her flying, but she grabs for the railing. She tries. But the railing breaks, and she falls, falls nearly an entire story, landing hard, breathless, on her back, and she nearly blacks out. Maybe she _does_ black out.

That’s the thing about injuries. That’s the thing about pain and the foggy head of the meds that are trying their very best to counteract it: time doesn’t make sense. Almost _nothing_ makes sense.

When she tries to sit up, she sees the piece of metal jutting out from her thigh, and she thinks _oh. Shouldn’t that have hurt more?_

She tries to move her leg, just to figure out how badly it’s going to hurt once her body catches up with her eyes, but it stays put, impaled, and it _does_ hurt.

The ringing in her ears fades eventually, and the first thing she hears is Leia. Leia, high pitched and frantic, relaying orders. Jyn can barely see anything, wedged as she is beside the concrete ramp, blocked from the fury of the AT-ST, but the world still shakes when it fires. She can only watch as the anarchists retreat, running past her hiding spot, in the face of the AT-ST’s power, and she knows that Leia and the others need to leave. If she could speak, if she didn’t feel like her ribcage was being crushed by debris, she would tell them to. She would tell K-2SO to get Leia out of here, to do whatever he had to do, because K-2SO would be the only one who would listen to reason.

One of the anarchists scrambles behind the ramp for cover, and her fingers spasm on her blaster as he spots her, eyes wide.

At least there’s this. At least she’s still got her grip on her pistol. At least she can…

But no, her reflexes are too slow, and the anarchist lurches forward and stomps on her wrist. The surprise of the pain draws a feral cry out of her, shocking even to her own ears. But it’s a sharp enough pain that it fills her with surely fleeting energy, and she bucks back up, snarling, still trapped, but not letting it stop her. Her free hand claws at him as he bends down to pick up her blaster.

An accident, she remembers. None of this is personal. This is all just an accident.

She’s so angry, so fucking furious, and she finds it in herself to do something about it.

Later, she doesn’t think she will ever be able to explain how she did it. She couldn’t even fully sit up a moment ago, but her fury drives her up, and she times her desperate lunge perfectly. The anarchist bends down, and Jyn pulls herself up, and she grabs the man’s head and drags it down, fingers knotting in his hair, slamming his head to the side, against the ramp beside them. The AT-ST fires, the two-shot punch she knows so well, the timing perfect. She bends her free, uninjured leg up to her chest and kicks the anarchist square in the stomach, sending him stumbling back into the open. Before he has a chance to do anything, the AT-ST fires again, and he’s blasted away.

Her fingers are numb – broken wrist? Does it matter? She’s literally stuck to the ground – but she can move them, can curl them up to her chest as she rests her head back against the stone. It’s not comfortable, but at least she got to do something kind of amazing.

It still doesn’t hurt very much.

It’s like a dream, when it happens. Except it’s not like one of _her_ dreams. She only ever has bad dreams. But the smoke clears in front of her, allowing her to see through the archway she didn’t even notice before. It allows her to see the figures slowing to a jog.

A brief distraction, the ramp rumbling at her back, sound screaming out from the landing pad behind her. A massive boom of explosion, in the direction of the AT-ST, and she knows that Bodhi or K-2SO or Leia has fired on the AT-ST with whatever weapons the ship has.  

The explosion, she can’t see, but she can see the flare of it, the way it brightens up this dimly lit corner of the world, casting light on the shadowy figures, and it’s _Cassian_ standing there.

It’s Cassian, and he’s wearing her favorite tan shirt, almost like the one he wore on Scarif, soft and warm against his skin except, even more ridiculously, it’s plastered to his skin, soaking wet. If she didn’t already think that this was impossible, _that_ would do it. Chirrut and Baze are right behind him, and Luke, and all of it is a lot to take in, but it’s _Cassian_ , when she had already begun to fear forgetting what he looked like.

She blinks to try and clear her eyes, certain that she’s wrong, but it’s hard to open them again. It’s…

“Help me!” she hears, Leia’s voice, and she hears the rubble shifting.

“Jyn!”

It’s his voice, too. Familiar in its panic, its dread. He’s always so _worried._ She feels a tired desire to reassure him that it’s okay.

Is this real?

Real or not, it seems fitting, at the end. Lyra died in Galen’s arms, with Galen’s face above her. And Galen died with Jyn. If she’s going to go so soon, isn’t it fair? That she should see someone she loves?

“Be careful! Her leg!” Luke.

“Shit, oh shit, stop, you can’t move her.” Bodhi.

“We _have_ to move her!” K-2SO.

“Stop it, K. Let me through. Jyn. Jyn!” Cassian.  

Movement, and someone shifts her weight, the motion tugging at her leg, and the weights that were on her eyelids disappear. She cries out, opening her eyes, trying to sit up.

He grabs her face, fingers hooked onto the back of her head, his thumbs pressing into her cheekbones, nothing soft or gentle about it, and he’s _here_ , startlingly in focus, saying something she can’t quite make out, and she wants to ask him if he’s real.

“Jyn, here, this’ll help,” Bodhi is saying, stammering somewhere just out of sight, and he presses something into one of her hands. She curls her fingers around it, the familiar warmth of the stone. _You keep it_ , she wants to tell him. _You’ll need it_. But it’s good to have her fingers wrapped around it. It’s instinctual after so many years of clinging to it for comfort.

“Don’t do that! Stop it! She’s going to be fine!” Leia snaps. “Help me, here.”

“You need to keep the metal in,” Chirrut says, his face swimming somewhere past Cassian’s. Luke has the back of his hand pressed to his mouth, kneeling somewhere by Jyn’s leg, and Jyn can see the blood on his fingertips, can see the hopeless grayness to his face.

“How are we supposed to do that?” Cassian snaps, turning to face Chirrut, and…

More firing. Explosions. Cassian is still holding onto her, but her face is tucked into his shoulder now. He’s trying to keep her safe.

She’s starting to think there’s been a mistake. This _feels_ real, and she can smell him. The smell of the skin of his neck where it meets his shoulder. The smell of his jacket. It all feels…

She hears Baze roaring, hears blaster fire, Leia saying “to the left! Troopers!”

She _does_ understand it. Does want to cling to it. Wants to make herself care. But everything has such a sheen of unreality to it that any attempts to claw her way back to awareness are unsuccessful. Everything she tries to hold on to just slides from her fingertips, slippery, refusing to be held.

Cassian saying, “no, no, no, stay awake. Jyn, look at me! Please, Jyn!”

But her eyes are sliding closed, unable to focus on his face, so close to hers. It’s a blur of an expression, drawn and haunted and lined with terror, but she can’t...

Someone tries to shake her awake, tries to keep her from fading, but it isn’t enough.

She _tries_. Her eyes just won’t cooperate. Her eyelids stay where they are, no matter how hard she wills them to open.

_Just one more time_ , she tries to tell herself. _Just let me see one…_

* * *

In K-2SO’s files, there is not a single other time that Cassian has ever looked so distraught. Or helpless. Or afraid. There have been hundreds of moments in which his face was plain enough for K-2SO to catalogue without question. Sad. Frightened. Lost. Confused. Some species are hard to read, but humans have a habit of wearing their emotions in their expressions. For most people K-2SO encounters, there is a high percentage of guesswork involved with determining facial expressions, but there’s no need to guess with Cassian. Years of data have allowed him near-perfect analysis.

This expression on his face now is new. It is a combination of many things, and K-2SO doesn’t quite understand it. And it is _terrifying._

Not that K-2SO is able to feel fear _,_ really. Not that he is able to feel anything. He understands that he does not have emotions in the way that Cassian does. His states of being are much less complex. Cause and effect. The ship is on fire: the crew is in danger: I will act to put it out, but I do not want to die: that is an approximation of fear. Jyn Erso is arguing with Cassian: Cassian is upset: Cassian is my priority: I feel an approximation of anger. Simple lines that follow simple paths. He also knows, however, after years of careful study, that organics are far less linear. Less rational. The closest companion he has in that respect is probably General Draven. Draven follows similar lines of pragmatic thought. He does not look at K-2SO with a confusing swirl of emotions on his face.

But Draven is not a priority. Cassian is. That means that anything that distresses Cassian also must necessarily distress K-2SO.

So perhaps that explains the spark of _something_ inside him. It jolts his wiring, like a malfunction of some sort, except it doesn’t _feel_ physical. In fact, he can’t quite quantify what it is. But he knows what fear looks like in others. As he assesses the situation unfolding around him, as he investigates his own data and tries to determine a solution to his problem, he comes to know that this is a stronger approximation of fear than anything he has felt before.

The fear is not only for Cassian. Cassian’s survival is a priority. His _contentment_ a secondary priority, because Cassian’s odds of survival increase in correlation to the amount of things in Cassian’s life that he feels are worth surviving for.

However, at some point since waking up on Kopha to find that Jyn Erso had found a way to reboot him, she has become a priority as well.

He understands human bodies. Possibly better than he wishes he did. And so he takes in the amount of blood spilling from her leg, and he takes in the glazed quality of her eyes, the pale cheeks, the disorientation. She does not have much time if no one does something, and no one is doing _anything_. They are all too confused, too afraid, too hurt to do much more than try to stop the bleeding. There is also a firefight around them, dividing their concentration. These are not optimum conditions for decision making, and K-2SO does not begrudge them their lack of cohesion, but he knows that he must rectify it quickly.

Bodhi destroyed the AT-ST, but the area will not remain safe for long. And Jyn will not survive if they are pinned down again. If they take too long to render medical assistance, she will surely die. Cassian and the others are being cautious, but K-2SO has already run the data three times in the span of time it takes a blaster bolt from Baze’s weapon to burn through the heart of a Stormtrooper. Caution is not the answer right now.

He is graceless when he shoves them out of the way, because he determines that there is no time to explain or to be gentle with them. Cassian told him to prioritize showing proper deference to the princess, to the Jedi, but K-2SO decides that that is a lower priority than Jyn’s survival, especially at such a critical precipice, and so he deletes that directive. He shoves Luke away, pushes Leia’s hands off Jyn’s leg, and he pries Cassian’s white-knuckled grip from the front of Jyn’s shirt. He ignores the tear-tracks on Cassian’s face and the shout of desperation and the expression ( _betrayal_ , he decides) on his face when K-2SO sends him back on his ass. Bodhi does not require removal, because he scuttles back on his own, because Bodhi trusts him, he knows, and that is good. The area cleared of interference, K-2SO lifts Jyn into his arms.

He is careful to keep the twisted piece of metal railing firmly in her leg, because the human body is a strange thing that requires itself to stay free of punctures even on the seemingly non-vital parts of itself. And once a thing is punctured, it needs to _stay_ punctured until it can be treated, lest more blood escape. He knows this, and so he wrenches the metal free from the rest of the structure with a twist of a few fingers. The rest of it hangs through her leg, and he makes it a priority to be careful not to jostle it. He would risk causing her more pain. Much more importantly, he would risk her losing more blood. He does not care if she is in _pain._

(He shuffles his priority list quickly, as if to hide even from himself that he feels an approximation of distress again at the thought of Jyn coming to harm).

“Wait, K!” Bodhi is shouting, but K-2SO ignores him.

There are weapons firing somewhere, but K-2SO ignores them, too.

“Keep them off me,” he says simply, speaking to Baze, who is thirty-six percent more likely to act rational about this.

That is not very high, but it’s all he has to work with.

It takes him a few moments to adjust to the odd shift of Jyn in his arms, but it is not difficult. She carries less weight than Cassian, after all, and he has carried Cassian like this before. Once she is balanced correctly, he breaks into a run as he rounds the corner to the ramp. A blaster bolt that he takes in his shoulder is next to nothing. He is still operating at eighty-six percent efficiency.

The ramp is steep, and his legs are unsuited to the incline, and it is more difficult than it was before without the additional weight, but it is simple enough to recalibrate.

At the top, the ship is still open, waiting for him. His shoulder is smoking, but there are fire suppressants waiting on board, so he does not consider that an important concern.

Jyn, however, has less than a thirty-seven percent chance of survival beyond the next twenty minutes unless someone proficient in medical knowledge is able to assist her.

K-2SO places her down on the ground as soon as he is within the ship. There are no cots on this shuttle. Only seats. The floor will have to do. He takes off his poncho, and he finds the medical supplies exactly where his database indicated they would be.

Leia is not far behind him, and she grabs the kit from his hands.

“You brilliant droid,” she says, absently but earnestly. “You brilliant, beautiful droid.”

He ignores that, though he does not disagree. He would prefer if Bodhi was the one seeing to Jyn’s recovery (he has no data on Leia’s proficiency in this area), and so he exits the ship again.

Baze and Chirrut are covering Bodhi and Cassian, who are both operating at less than optimum efficiency. Chirrut as well, although he is far more alert. Luke is perhaps the most efficient of all of them. He is helping Bodhi and firing a blaster at the same time. Bodhi is limping.

K-2SO doesn’t have time to wait. He lifts Bodhi off his feet.

“Are you serious?” Luke asks, but K-2SO ignores him and carries Bodhi, only faintly protesting, into the ship.

Bodhi understands without being told that K-2SO wants him to assist with saving Jyn’s life. That’s part of why K-2SO enjoys the time he spends with Bodhi more than anyone except for Cassian. Bodhi understands him in a way that even Cassian does not. Bodhi hears the things that K-2SO doesn’t speak aloud.

“We need to get her to the clinic,” Leia is saying.

“We need to get off this _planet_ ,” Bodhi argues, but Leia shakes her head.

“She won’t make it,” Leia says. “ _Look_ at her, Bodhi!”

K-2SO’s preliminary analysis agrees with Leia’s assessment. Jyn’s shirt is raised slightly at the hip, and there is heavy bruising there. A high chance of internal injury, in addition to the threat of blood loss from her leg. With this added data, her odds of survival without medical intervention drop to twenty-six percent.

“I have no data on the clinic’s location,” K-2SO says. “You have to show me.”

Leia is beginning to answer, but Cassian crashes into the ship, still with that horrible look on his face. K-2SO doesn’t like it, so he looks away. He lifts the princess up, out of the way, so Cassian can stumble to his knees and take Jyn’s face in his hands and resume his pointless tears over her prostrate, unconscious form.

Luke is next, with the guardians not far behind, and K-2SO slams his fist against the controls for the door to close it.

“Show me where it is,” he tells Leia.

“It isn’t far,” she replies.

A waste of fuel to take off and land again so close to each other, but that’s a low priority. Out of, perhaps, something like spite, he shuffles it even lower than it already was, until it’s just below ‘inquiring as to the exact nature of the relationship between Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker, because they have a number of extremely similar features that suggest a blood relation’. Which is to say: so low on the priority list that he will likely never get around to caring about it.

“Hold on,” he tells everyone, although they are busy not listening to him. Leia gives him a nod from the co-pilot’s seat. He doesn’t have any data about her proficiency in _this_ area, either. And this is a dangerous situation. They will be flying in the middle of a war, and landing in one as well. But he doesn’t have another choice, and so he returns the gesture. “Taking off.”

* * *

It’s the third time they’re bursting into her clinic in a single day, except this time it’s a _swarm_ of people and a gigantic security droid, and Hinara looks absolutely mortified.

“You can’t… you can’t…” she tries weakly, but Leia points a blaster at her, as apologetically as possible.

“I swear,” she says. “We’ll pay for everything we take. But we need a medscanner now, and you need to save her life.”

“ _Please_ ,” Cassian adds, and Leia wants to snap at him to let her handle this, because there’s nothing less intimidating than someone who can’t even get through a single syllable without his voice hitching.

Recognizing finally that this is a _new_ injury that has Jyn draped loosely over K-2SO’s arms like some kind of wilting damsel, Hinara hesitates. But only for a moment.

“Set her down here,” she says, her uncertain expression transforming into determination. “And I need all of you to do _exactly_ what I tell you to do.” Slipping her gloves on, taking in Jyn’s injuries with an impassivity that feels measured and practiced but also doesn’t feel _entirely_ like a lie, she glances over at Leia. “And would you please stop pointing that fucking blaster at me?”

Leia, relief flooding her body, leaving her boneless after hours of tension, does one better and lets it clatter to the floor.

“Yes, ma’am,” she says, and it’s the relief of trust, of belief, of certainty in Hinara’s skill and determination both that allow her show the barest hint of a smile. “Thank you. I know we’ve asked a lot of you today.”

“You have,” Hinara agrees. She rolls up her sleeves and meets Leia’s eyes at last, glinting with a fierceness that feels like a promise even before she says, “and there’s no way I’m going to let all that work go to waste. Relax. All of you. She’s going to be _fine._ ”

And Hinara, beckoning Leia forward to help, gets to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, as always, to all of you reading and commenting. You continue to make all this wild binge-posting worth it


	10. You Have Nothing to be Sorry for, Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are! At last! The final chapter of the final mission. I started to write a really sappy "thank you" diatribe until I remembered I still have a final part to edit and post, so y'all have been spared that for now. Onward to the Finale!

Cassian has entered this mental state in which he finds it very difficult to pay much attention to what’s going on around him. He tries. He’s always trying, always looking and cataloguing and memorizing. Whatever Draven had to say about it, Cassian has never stopped being an intelligence agent, and it serves him well now. But everything is so _automatic_. He listens when Chirrut and Baze report in from out front, is listening when Luke reports from the back. He’s listening to Bodhi’s rambling worry, even. Leia’s gentle attempts to calm Bodhi down.

But everything that is not the gurney on which Jyn is lying, over which Hinara is working, all of it just sort of slides through him. He nods, updates orders, thanks them for the information. When Bodhi addresses him, he responds to the pilot’s concerns with several syllables at a time.

But then the moment ends, and he’s hollow again, and he’s not even sure what anyone said, and he just looks back across the room to continue his vigil.

It’s just… _Jyn_ , just Jyn, purple bruises on her stomach. It’s Jyn with blistered skin on her back, peeling and horrifying in places where bacta patches hadn’t already been used to heal up what they could. It’s Jyn with her pants being cut off her, Hinara careful around the metal still stuck in her leg, and it’s the lack of reaction, the lack of flushing anger to have herself so exposed. It’s wrong, all of it is wrong, and it’s all he can see.

_Not fair_ , his inner voice says again. It’s not _fair_. She’s alive. She needs to _stay_ alive.

K-2SO continues to make things worse by trying so obviously to make them better, which makes Cassian afraid. K-2SO is _never_ this considerate.

“Thirty-six percent chance of survival. That’s up three percent in the last five minutes,” the droid says encouragingly, looming over him as Cassian lurches to his feet and goes back to pacing.

“Give me a bit more credit than that,” Hinara mutters, not looking up from her examination of the medscanner.

“I will give you credit when you’ve earned it,” K-2SO replies.

Bodhi is talked into calming down again, Leia’s hand smoothing back his hair like he’s a child, squeezing his shoulder briefly. At some point, she had retrieved the kyber necklace from Jyn’s hand, and Bodhi has the string wrapped around his fingers, the crystal pressed between his palms as if in prayer. He keeps half-rising out of his seat, as if he thinks he has something to be doing, then slowly sinks back down when he realizes that he doesn’t. It’s startlingly like the way he was back in the beginning, just after Jedha. Cassian watches him, tries to tell himself that Bodhi will be okay.  He has pulled himself out of dark places before. In fact, he excels at it. But Cassian can’t help but feel like everything is falling apart.

If Jyn doesn’t recover? If Hinara can’t save her? Cassian doesn’t know what he’ll do. He knew that Bodhi’s reaction would be difficult to bear, knew that Chirrut and Baze would be disillusioned. If she doesn’t pull through…

He thinks of Eadu again. He remembers the sick certainty of knowing that he had made a tactical mistake in saving Jyn from Jedha. He had been preparing to kill Galen Erso, lying to all of them, and inwardly he had been running through the other members of their newly forged team: Jyn would certainly try to kill him, and she would likely succeed; Bodhi would side with Jyn; Chirrut and Baze would side with Jyn. If she killed him for what he was going to do to Galen, they would do nothing to stop him, and K-2SO wouldn’t stand a chance between the four of them.

The months that have passed have disabused him of that notion. They wouldn’t hurt him anymore. They are his family, same as hers. Still, he can’t help but think of that. If she doesn’t pull through this, will they stay? Or will it be too much? Will they drift apart, untethered by the glue holding them together? They stayed for him last time, when she left. But death is so much more permanent. It creates scars that won’t heal. It causes rifts that can’t be bridged. Would he even _want_ them to stay? Or would it be easier to suffer in isolation, where he wouldn’t have to worry about pulling himself together for anyone else?

Leia moves to Hinara now that Bodhi has relaxed again. She hovers, eyes flitting over everything, double and triple checking the Twi’lek’s work. Cassian has already been told he’s not allowed to come any closer than the chair where he’s sitting, but he watches hungrily, desperate for any update. Leia asks a lot of questions, her voice comforting and steady, reassuring. Hinara hardly looks at her at all, answers quickly and evenly, and she doesn’t take her eyes from the task at hand. Cassian is almost embarrassingly grateful for it.

If he was feeling more himself, less scattered, he would force himself to stay busy. It has always worked in the past. He has always been the type to work through the fear, to make sure everything is as safe as it could be. He would make the rounds, checking in with Chirrut and Baze and Luke, maybe leaving the clinic for a bit, staying unseen, moving around a perimeter of a few buildings in every direction to make sure that the fighting is still centered several blocks away, making sure that they haven’t been followed. But the instinct to get moving doesn’t last very long before it dances away from him again, bleeds back into numb disinterest. He just hunches down further into his wet clothes and waits.

“He’s going to catch cold,” Hinara says, seemingly to the surgical device she’s preparing, but Leia’s eyes travel up to Cassian when she says it, and he automatically tries to make himself smaller, tries to shrink into himself.

“Right,” Leia says.

“There’s a clothes dryer down the hall. You should think about it too. Cycle through, oh, twenty minutes or so.”

“You want me out of the room,” Cassian says, and his voice is hoarser, is rougher, than he expected. It brings a flush of embarrassment to his face to hear it. How much had he been yelling? He remembers only vague snatches of time, short, painful moments, but his voice sounds as worn out as he feels.

Hinara, to her credit, doesn’t bother to try and hide it.

“Yes,” she says, raising her eyes briefly to his before traveling back down to her hands, twisting a knob on the device. “This is a delicate procedure, and I can’t do it with you watching me. Both of you.”

“What’s to stop you from…” he starts, but Hinara snorts an indelicate, incredulous laugh.

“My conscience?” she points out. “I patched her up the first time. Tried to help her the second. I’m not going to let her die the third time.”

“It would conserve your limited resources,” K-2SO points out. Hinara does that bitter laugh again, and Cassian has the feeling that if she wasn’t so focused on her work, she would be rolling her eyes.

“If it’ll make you feel better, leave the droid. He can help me.”

“I don’t want to help.”

“You want to save her life?” Hinara asks. “Because I could use someone with steady hands, and the rest of you aren’t up to the task.”

K-2SO pretends to consider that for a moment, but Cassian knows well what the droid looks like when he’s putting on an act. K-2SO has already heard the logic in Hinara’s assessment. From the surprisingly quick assent, Cassian knows he has probably wanted to help this entire time. Cassian’s chest clenches around the surprising sign of affection from his friend.

When K-2SO moves over to Hinara’s side, Leia swaps out, approaching Cassian with an open, calm stance that makes him a little irritated, mostly because he knows he probably requires this kind of temperate treatment.

“Come on,” she says. It’s not gentle, but it’s gentle for _her_ , and it makes him realize that he’s got to look even worse than he thinks he does. He glares up at her, knowing he probably seems sightly feral, but if there’s anyone likely to be unimpressed by his attempts at intimidation, it’s her. “Get up.”

He does. It feels like cowardice to leave now. It feels like he’s giving up, because part of him thinks _I don’t want to see it_ , and part of him thinks _I_ can’t _see it_.

Leia leads him towards the hallway, keeps glancing back over her shoulder as if to make sure he’s still moving. Making sure he hasn’t stopped, stricken motionless by fear when it comes time to leave Jyn behind.

He does turn back, once. He _is_ weak, after all. But nothing has changed. Her eyes are still closed, her bruises still sickening, her face still too pale. He hitches his shoulders up higher and follows Leia.

She finds the small room with the washer and dryer with little trouble, and she gives him an imperious nod of the head.

“I’m not bothering with the pants,” he says, tugging his shirt over his head.

“Please don’t,” she agrees.

* * *

It was just a thinly veiled attempt to get him out of the room, and he knows it, but he _does_ feel better once his shirt is dry again. Leia has turned up the heat in the room, and she closes the door to warm it up faster, and he knows he wasn’t the only one trying to hide his shivering.

“How are you still alive?” she asks after he’s got his shirt back on. She’s leaning back against the door like she thinks Cassian has some intention of trying to escape. In truth, he’s afraid to leave this room. He didn’t think he would be able to peel himself from Jyn’s side, but now that he has, he feels a reluctance to go back. As long as he’s in here, she’s still alive.

“What do you mean?” he asks

“We saw you. In the square. Executed.”

Her words are clipped, and Cassian knows her well enough to know she’s trying to hide her emotions. He can’t help the small smile.

“Worried about me?” he asks, though it’s a ridiculous question. Of course she was worried. He would have been worried too. He _was_ worried. He isn’t usually the type to write off fear as a joke – no, that’s more Jyn’s area – but it’s been a long couple of days, and he’s not sure he can handle more seriousness than there already has been.  It’s a gentle plea to Leia: let’s not talk about this. But she doesn’t listen. She doubles down.

“Worried about _her_ ,” she says, her voice short and allowing _no_ misunderstanding, and Cassian looks away, his shoulders curling defensively around his crossed arms. He shrugs, and it feels absurdly petulant.

“It wasn’t me. It was someone else. _Obviously._ I’m right here.”

“Your green jacket. He was wearing it. I guess we could’ve made an assumption, but it looked _just_ like you, Cassian.”

“The ambassador. I gave it to him so he would stop complaining”

Leia sighs, slumps a little farther against the door, as if in relief. It doesn’t seem rational – obviously, he’s standing right in front of her. Obviously he wasn’t executed – but he’s not going to fault her for it right now. They’re _all_ running out. Of energy, of wits, of everything. Cassian feels boneless, feels like if he closes his eyes, he could fall asleep standing, might not wake for hours.

“Guess we can _officially_ write off getting aid from the government forces, then,” Leia says dryly. He glances up at her to see if she’s serious and is unsurprised by the intensity of the bitterness in her expression. “This is a fucking disaster. What was I thinking?”

It’s strange and a little telling that Cassian immediately defends her, even as he’s wondering the same thing.

“You were thinking that we had a chance to make a strong alliance,” he points out. “With the anarchists or with the government. Either way, against the Empire. And Aeron would have been a good strategic get.”

“Would have been. And now we’ve got nothing. You know what my father would have done, right?” She looks at him, pointed, waiting for an answer, and Cassian sighs. He avoids her expression, looks down at his feet instead. He doesn’t answer, mostly because he knows that she’ll do it for him. “He would have insisted that there was a way to appeal to both sides. That we could unite them. He probably would have been wrong, but he would have tried. And it would have been a hell of a convincing speech, so who knows? He might’ve pulled it off.”

“Possible, but unlikely. And it probably wouldn’t have been worth the risk, in the end,” Cassian reminds her gently.

“Probably.”

“Probably.”

She’s quiet after that, thoughtful, and then she lets out a sigh. His own frustrations are mirrored in it, his own disappointment.

“Guess this is what you get when you try to play both sides.”

“Not always. It’s worked before,” he points out. “Dozens of times. One failure doesn’t make the strategy a bad one.”

“You can stop defending me, you know. What am I gonna do, kick you out of the Rebellion? We’ll be lucky if you accept another mission with us ever again.”

“No,” Cassian says, a small chuckle, barely felt, wresting forth from his lips. “Maybe next time don’t ask me to kill anyone.”

“Yeah. That would be a good start. At least this mission has done wonders for my personal relationships. You, betrayed. Jyn _, very_ betrayed – she really had your back, you know. I haven’t had time to think about it yet, but the look that Luke gave me when he realized what we were doing here…”

“He doesn’t understand,” Cassian says softly. He leaves it at that. There are a thousand things that Luke doesn’t understand. He’s smart, intuitive, good natured, kind. Sheltered, too, until only recently. He _can’t_ understand the kinds of things that Leia and Cassian know. Cassian doesn’t want him to. It’s inevitable, though. He will eventually lose the rose-colored sheen. Will lose people under his command. Will have to see the teary-eyed, hollow expressions of the loved ones those soldiers leave behind. He will have to make choices, make sacrifices. He will understand eventually, the way everyone who survives a war long enough understands, but he doesn’t understand now.

“Yeah, well. I _do_ understand, and it still doesn’t sit right. I mean, what are we _fighting_ for, if we can’t even help these people? Hinara, we dragged her into this, and we’re going to leave her here. She’s going to have to deal with the consequences of this fucking war, and we’re just going to leave.”

“She can come with us, if you want.”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

“You’re saying you wish we could do more for these people, whether or not an alliance results from it.”

“More than just playing both sides until one of them gives us what we want.”

“But you know that isn’t always possible. We need alliances for a reason. We hardly have enough resources to help _ourselves._ ”

“I almost got all of you killed, Cassian.”

That’s the heart of it, then, and Cassian sighs. Her eyes are glimmering with moisture, but he knows her well enough to know that she won’t let them fall, and she won’t want him to acknowledge them in any way.

“You didn’t,” he says instead.

“We’re not home yet.”

“It wouldn’t be your fault even if we don’t make it out of here.”

“You wanted to go to Lower Mair last night. Maybe you would have been able to warn us about the attack in time.”

“Maybe,” he agrees. “And maybe I would have been captured and killed, and you all would have died looking for me. You know how this works. You know what these decisions entail. You know that this is a momentary panic, and that tomorrow you will be able to make the right decisions again.”

She lets out a laugh that’s watery, contained, frustrated.

“Sometimes I think you did the right thing in leaving.”

Cassian only bites back another sigh because he thinks it will sound petulant. He knew, somehow, that this was where it was going.

“I didn’t leave,” he says.

“Pedantic. What did I say about that?”

“I just…I couldn’t have changed anything.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You leaving would be a completely different situation.”

“I _wouldn’t_ leave. Just because I said…I’m not actually thinking…”

“I know that. I know you’re just…talking. Frustrated. Upset. But I’m reminding you: you can change things. You’re important. They listen to you. Leaving was all right for me. It would be different if it was you.”

“I never asked to be important,” Leia says, her voice strained and quiet, and Cassian has to allow a small smile.

“No,” he admits. “You demanded it.”

Leia shakes her head and looks away, but the corner of her mouth is pulled up in a reluctant half grin.

“You’re such an asshole,” she says finally.

“I’m telling the truth.”

“Yeah, in an asshole sort of way.”

“I’m glad you’re alive too,” Cassian says. Leia lets out a small laugh, halfway to broken, but she’s already healing, Cassian knows. She’ll be all right. Perhaps a little more open to suggestions, next time. Guilty over this for a while, of course. But she’ll regain her confidence easily enough.

“Before we go back out there. This…probably isn’t my place.”

“But it won’t stop you from saying whatever it is you’re about to say,” Cassian guesses.

“Earlier, when we…when she thought you were dead. Cassian, you should know…”

“I don’t want to hear about it.”

“I know. I don’t want to _talk_ about it. But it made me think...oh, fuck. I don’t know how to say this kind of stuff, Cassian. You know that. But you need to just…just stop trying to _hide_ everything.”

“What?”

“You, the both of you, you’re both ridiculous, you know that? You’ve found someone who can actually deal with you, who doesn’t care about some of the frankly horrifying shit you’ve done. She loves you, Cassian. If you can’t see that…”

“Who said I can’t see that?”

“Then what’s stopping you from loving her back?”

“What? Nothing! Of course I…look, what’s this about? What did she say?”

“It’s not about what she said! It’s you, and her, both of you trying so hard to protect yourselves from each other. Or from yourselves. I know you’re afraid. You’re afraid she’s going to run, and you’re afraid to fully admit that you’re not the same man you were before Scarif. You’re afraid to come back to the Rebellion, but you’re afraid to leave it. And _she_ is afraid of what that means. It’s not that difficult!”

“Leia, it’s not like…”

“I know exactly what it’s like! Do you have any idea how fucking frustrating it is to see you have _everything_ and risk losing it because you don’t know what to do with it?”

“You’re, what, you’re blaming me for…I don’t even know what you’re blaming me for.”

“I’m not _blaming_ you for anything! If I hadn’t thought you’d just been killed in front of her, I would have told her…” trailing off, she seems to realize that Jyn is still in danger, and she wants to change the subject, but that hurts, that’s too much, so he steps closer, simmering.

“Say it,” he orders. He has been stern with her before. Has been officious and pedantic, sure, but this is new. This is fury, anger, and she has to know it for what it is, for a distraction, for a refusal to allow that Jyn might not recover, but she responds to it anyway. Tilts her head just slightly back, her chin jutting out. She looks like Jyn, for just a moment. “Say what you were going to say.”

“I would have told her that she was being a fucking fool, preparing for the end so much that she’s hastening it along.”

“And what would you tell me?”

“I’d tell you that she’s going to die, Cassian.” Harsh, but softened slightly by the look in her eyes. “Maybe not today. _Hopefully_ not today. But she’s going to die. Or you’ll die. Because that’s how this works. Maybe it’ll be twenty fucking years from now, or forty, or maybe it’ll be a year. A week. Fifteen fucking seconds. It’s going to end. What’s the fucking _point_ of holding any part of yourself back? To protect yourself? How is it protecting yourself if you push away _everything_ good for fear of hurting once it’s gone?”

“I don’t know. You tell me,” Cassian points out.

“Don’t be a child.”

“It’s not so easy. We both know that.”

“It’s not, but she’s waiting for you to figure it out. It’s not hypothetical, Cassian. It’s not a maybe. She’s there, and she wants you with her. Chirrut said…”

“Oh, wonderful. He talked to _you_ , too. Is there anyone he hasn’t told about this?”

“He’s right, though. Just…let her in, Cassian, will you?”

“She’s already in,” Cassian sighs, losing a little of the fire, trying to get her to understand. “I can’t let her in much more than I have.”

“You can. You forget that I know you. Just talk to her. Enough miscommunicating. Enough dancing around it. Enough trying to convince yourself that she’ll choose to leave you eventually. Do you have any idea how painful it is to watch you think you don’t deserve the happiness she’s offering? It’s the same thing I feel every time I watch her think she isn’t enough for you. You’re both kriffing ridiculous, Cassian.”

“Thank you for the support.”

“I know you’re deflecting because you know I’m right.”

“I’m…no, that’s not it. Stop smiling at me like that.”

“Mhm. Look, I don’t know how to make this any more plain to you, but I’ll try: neither of you are going anywhere. Get used to it. And don’t try to say anything. You won’t convince me I’m wrong. Are you ready to go back out there?”

Cassian hesitates, but he swallows back any arguments, any thought of hiding _here_ , instead.

“Yes,” he says, firm, like he’s trying to force himself to believe it.

* * *

Jyn wakes to almost total darkness, except for the red glow of a small light over the door. She wakes to disorientation, too. She spends her first several seconds of consciousness trying to figure out when Bodhi installed a red light like that in Rogue One. And why is the door so far away? The door to Cassian’s cabin is only a few feet from the bed.

A few things trickle in, slower than she’d like. She remembers Coruscant. Remembers spending the night in that cargo hold. She has a vague memory of hands on either side of her face, of voices above her, but…

“Look who’s awake.”

She turns her head towards the gentle voice, but even that seems to require more energy than she has, and her head turns slowly, painfully. It’s Leia she sees first, and Bodhi next, beside her, but then Cassian crowds in, and she feels relief before she even realizes why: it was real, it was _real_ , and he isn’t dead.

“Cassian,” she manages, her voice clogged, choked, and his hands are trembling when he reaches for her, when he brushes her hair away from her face. “What…?”

“You scared the shit out of us, that’s what,” Leia says.

“But you’re all right. Hinara patched you up. You’re fine,” Bodhi offers, his smile bursting across his face. Obviously a lie, but a nice one, and she lets it slide.

“Where…?”

“Still on Aeron,” Cassian answers. Even just his _voice_ is overwhelming. “It’s the middle of the night. There’s a lull in the fighting for now. We’re waiting until there is some more air traffic, and then we’ll be on the way. How are you feeling?”

“Numb?” Jyn offers, a small, helpless laugh following. Cassian smiles a bit, that reserved, thin-lipped smile when he doesn’t want to. “How are you…?”

“It wasn’t me,” he answers simply, and she knows that Leia must have already spoken to him about this. “Just try to get some rest. You’ve been injured very badly.”

“What else is new?” she mutters, but she doesn’t think he’s heard her. To be fair, it sounded like slurred nonsense even to her own ears. She reaches her hand up from beneath her blankets, and he takes it, fingers wrapping around her own, and she feels the familiar, relieved spike of fondness. “I’m sorry,” she tries to say. He shakes his head. _This_ , at least, he seems to have understood.

“Get some rest,” he says again, and he leans forward, hesitating, like it’s the first time they’ve done this, and he presses his lips to hers. When he pulls away, it’s only to rest his forehead against hers. “You have nothing to be sorry for, love,” he whispers.

Jyn wants to feel embarrassed that this has happened in front of Leia. She isn’t.

* * *

Horrifyingly, Draven is the first person she sees when she wakes next. That it’s an accident is only slightly comforting.

“Erso,” he says, surprised. He’s on his way by, appearing from behind her partition with his usual briskness, obviously on his way out of the medbay. His eyes cut to hers idly, checking on her progress, likely still expecting to find her sleeping. When he sees her eyes open, he hesitates, one foot half raised as if to take a step closer to the door, as, if to pretend that he hasn’t seen her at all. He was probably just visiting one of the other patients in here; separated by these ugly white privacy screens, there are at least six beds in this room, she remembers. But now _she’s_ awake, and he scowls as if he has been caught out at something, and it’s oddly funny that he thinks her being conscious means he has to stay, means he has to say anything at all.  She struggles into a seated position as he trudges closer.

“You really don’t have to,” she says pointedly, and he makes a face and sound at that, both speaking of agreement, but he steps up to stand beside her bed anyway.

“Your team all made it back with minimal injuries,” he says, like a peace offering, clutching a datapad in his hands like it’s a shield between them. It brings to mind another medbay, another datapad, that terrifying meeting on Yavin IV, but Jyn isn’t worried this time. Both because she’s too tired to worry and because she knows Draven well enough now: he isn’t the type to try at a failed experiment twice.

“Even Bodhi? He was limping.”

“Aside from you, he had the worst of it. A relatively minor break. A brief submersion in bacta was all that was required. Captain Andor should be just getting out of his official briefing with the council now. I’ve read the reports. Impressive work.”

“Aside from the fact that we spectacularly failed?”

“Right, well. They can’t all be successes.”

“Surprisingly forgiving, coming from you.”

“Is it? Surprising?”

She sighs out a sound that’s half-laugh.

“No,” she admits. “You’re only a dick when you have to be. And you’re more like Saw than I wish you were.”

It sounds far too honest, and she knows it’s the fault of the painkillers, but still she flushes with embarrassment to have said the words.

“Really.” Draven’s voice is clipped, but there’s a dry amusement to it.

“He always found a way to make his worst decisions seem like mere pragmatism. And he always found a way to convince people he was right. And then he’d do this awkward thing you’re doing. Trying to make it up to me. Trying to _connect_ , because he felt sorry for whatever he did. Not that he wouldn’t do it again. Victory at any cost, after all. I know you only _really_ cared about the assassination, anyway.”

Draven looks down, and he has that same sort of reluctant smile that Cassian used to have, back at the beginning. An expression she didn’t even recognize as a smile being smothered at first. Not until she had spent enough time around him to realize that it was just this habit of controlling his every expression, containing his grins, keeping his face neutral though he wanted the corners to lift up. She aches for Cassian’s shattered relationship with this man, just as she aches for her tainted memories of Saw.

They were both raised to pretend not to feel. Both raised to control themselves, to keep themselves difficult to read. Is it any wonder that things nearly fell apart the way they did on Coruscant? Is it any wonder that they have had so many difficulties trying to relate to each other? Trying to understand each other?

“What was it you said? Only a dick when I have to be? I should put that recommendation in my personnel file.”

Her eyes widen in genuine, unfiltered surprise.

“Was that a _joke_?” she asks, aghast.

“Only barely. I meant it about the work, you know. Your team made the best of a bad situation. And, yes. I had my priorities. Aeron was always going to be a cesspit, and I was fearful of this outcome from the beginning. But a lot of my people are still alive in part because of your actions on Coruscant, so I can’t consider it a total failure.”

She thinks, briefly, of bringing up the fact that it only happened because she and Cassian were off-centered, were too delicate around each other. Almost rages against him for tricking Cassian into accepting this mission at all, but she doesn’t. She understands his motives too well for that. And he won’t apologize, especially since it got results, since it saved lives. Arguing about it is pointless.

“You’ll tell him I’m awake, won’t you?” she asks. Draven rolls his eyes.

“I’m not your nursemaid,” he says, already turning away. “But yes.”

* * *

“You and Erso did good work.”

The voice still makes Cassian snap to attention. He spins towards Draven with his face already furrowing into a scowl, but the general does him the courtesy of pretending not to notice.

“Sir?” he manages ask.

“The Aeron mission was an utter disaster, but your work on Coruscant was well done. And from Princess Leia’s report, I can see that you did what you could to try and straighten out Aeron. She gives you a lot of credit, and I can tell that you earned it.”

“I…thank you, Sir,” Cassian replies. It kind of sounds like a question, and Draven seems to treat it like one.

“You seem better than you used to be. Less…well. Defeated, I suppose.” Draven cringes, and Cassian is at least glad that this moment is awkward for both of them. “What I mean to say is that I’m glad you left when you did. It would be better for me if you hadn’t, but it’s better for you that you did.”

It might be the kindest thing that Draven has ever said to him, and Cassian has no idea how to react to it.

Fortunately, Draven doesn’t seem very comfortable with it either, because he very quickly says, “Erso’s awake. She sent me to tell you. Goodbye.” and then whirls around and stalks in the other direction.

* * *

He wants to tell her about it. It’s the kind of thing that she would laugh at. It’s almost the first thing out of his mouth.

But it’s just… he sees her sitting up, braced against the pillows, her face in a grimace as she tries to readjust her weight without exacerbating her injuries, and it hits him again. All of it: the rain and the explosion and the certainty that she was dead followed by the quickly dashed hopes that she was all right. The blood and that horrible glazed look on her face, as if she didn’t recognize him. The frantic flight back to Hoth, fleeing Aeron in the middle of the night, Hinara barking orders to him and to K-2SO and to Leia, the four of them trying to keep Jyn steady. It all comes back, and when he steps into the room, Draven is the furthest thing from his mind.

She smiles when she sees him, and he has crossed the room to her in seconds. He’s sitting beside her, half on the bed before he thinks to ask her to make room, but she already has. Anticipating his movements as always. He wraps his arms around her, and he presses his lips to the top of her head, and she’s got one hand fisted in his shirt already, and he’s saying nonsense, a string of Festian and Basic words that she won’t even be able to understand except that she knows him well enough by now to know what the meaning is.

“Stop, stop it,” she says with a breathless sort of chuckle after he kisses the top of her head for the third time. “I’m all right!”

“You’re not. You almost _died_!”

“I didn’t, though. And you’re squeezing me too tight.”

“Shit.” He starts to unwind himself from her, but she lets out a sharp gasp, her fingers grabbing at his arms, digging into his skin.

“Don’t you _dare_. Just…easy.”

He smiles a little at that and concedes, relaxing the tension in his muscles.

“I’m sorry,” he says into her hair. She snuggles closer, as always finding the exact right places, her body slotting against his like it was carved to.

“It’s fine. Back’s just a little sore,” she says, as if her injuries are mild, sparring-induced bruises. He caught only glimpses of the burns on her back, but those glimpses were more than enough to know that she’s feigning her usual inability to be hurt. A quality they both share, the desire to keep the other from worrying, but he’s annoyed by it now. Though, in comparison, the burns were next to nothing. It was the internal bleeding and the blood loss from the AT-ST’s blast and the subsequent fall that almost killed her.

“I _am_ sorry, though. Not just for that. I was talking to Leia…”

“Oh, for fuck’s…we aren’t doing this now.”

“No, Leia was right…”

“I doubt that.”

“Listen, she just said…”

“Cassian, do you want me to call for a med droid?”

“An empty bluff, and you know it. You hate them. And I don’t think they’d be very happy about this.”

He gestures to his precarious perch: one knee tucked up beside him, the other leg hanging off the bed, his upper body pressed close to her, one arm tight around her shoulder and the other lower, cutting across the front of her stomach with a much more gentle touch. She recognizes that he’s not wrong: a med droid would kick him out and put him on the “no entry” list for this. Still, she frowns, challenging.

“Might be worth it if we don’t have to talk about this,” she says. He makes a quiet noise of protest, and she sighs against him. “I fucked up, okay? If you want me to apologize, I will, but…”

“What? I’m the one who…”

“Oh, come on. Don’t start this. You feel guilty for _everything_. Let me have this one. I shouldn’t have panicked. But we talked about it! And I thought we left it in a pretty decent place, so what are you doing talking to Leia about it?”

“She said you talked about it. When you thought I was dead.”

She grimaces at that, and he thinks he has pushed her too far by saying it. Maybe she thought that they could get away with not talking about it. Maybe she thought that they could just start over, and neither of them would have to address the fact that they just saw what would happen if they lost each other.

“Listen, I… I don’t think I need to tell you that nothing I said when…nothing I said made much sense. And we definitely aren’t talking about that. I don’t want to even _think_ about that.”

She burrows stubbornly closer, and he curls a little tighter, closing his eyes against her hair. He hates it, hates the thought of it. But it’s a secret thrill to know that she was upset.

Of course she was upset. Of course she would be. He remembers how frightened and tense she seemed, looking down at him on the shuttle after Scarif. She hadn’t even known him then, had hated him for most of their acquaintance, and yet he could see her fear for him. And on Kazadu, when he heard the alarm in her voice. No, of course she was upset. No matter what else he has worried about her, about them, about their relationship, he at least has always understood that she _cares_. She always has.

But it’s not just _upset_. He can recognize it in her voice, because he feels it too. The relief of taken-back horror. The certainty of nothing being the same again, of the light being gone from his heart forever, only to find that he was wrong. That it’s still here. That she hasn’t gone anywhere. He holds her tighter for it, and he thinks of what Leia said: stop hiding.

“I heard the shuttle explode,” he says, quietly. If he could look at her, it might make this easier for her to follow, easier for her to understand that he’s _serious_ about it, but he can’t. Not quite. He can feel her tilting her head up to look at him, her hair moving under the side of his jaw as she angles up, and his jaw clenches at the gentle brushing of it, but also at the fact that he has to finish it now, has to say it now. “You said there were people outside, and I… I heard the shuttle explode, saw the flame. I thought…Luke and I got up there, to the landing pad, and we saw what was left of it. And there were no remains. I thought you had been…that there was nothing left of you. Nothing.”

“Oh,” she says quietly. “I hadn’t even…oh, Cassian.”

She presses even closer than before, shifting her knees slightly, curling them up, sideways, overlapping the one he has on the bed beside her, giving in to the impulse to remove any space that is still between them.

“Luke eventually talked me into hoping you were still alive. That you and Leia hadn’t been in the shuttle when it exploded, but I didn’t want to hear it at first. I thought it would be harder, if I let myself hope and you were gone all along. I could barely stand the thought of you being gone at all. And then I almost lost you for _real_.”

“Who was he?” Jyn asks, after a long silence that stretches between them. “The man in your coat.”

“It was the ambassador.”

Another short silence, and Jyn says, “we were on the landing pad, when it happened. Just outside the ship. Three stories up, and it was raining so hard…but he looked…it looked so much like you.”

“I know.”

“ _Fuck_ , Cassian.”

“I know.”

“When I saw you, after I fell, I thought…I thought it was some hallucination, or some sign I was _truly_ fucked. Worse off than I thought. But…I thought I’d lost you. I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?”

“Wasting _time_ with worrying you’d leave me. That’s what Leia and I were talking about. It just seemed so fucking stupid when you were dead.”

He’s not sure how to reply to that, for a moment. He’s not even sure she wants him to: she nuzzles her head back under his jaw, and when he finally works up the courage to look down at her, her eyes are closed, brow furrowed.

He slips his hand past the collar of her shirt, fingers finding skin at the back of her neck and splaying over it, half his palm resting over warm bandages, his thumb brushing back and forth over the knob of her spine. She shivers a little at the contact but hums with pleasure and takes the idea, one small hand finding the hem of his shirt and trailing up to the bandages that cover the knife wound he received on Coruscant. Cataloguing injuries, soothing them with touch. This is familiar. This is okay.

“I could be doing…better, though,” he says. She scoffs quietly, and he thinks she might be drifting off again. That’s probably for the best. It wouldn’t look very professional if anyone walked in on him like this, so he should get up soon. Strange that he hadn’t even considered it until now. Being back on Hoth usually puts some kind of professional distance between them. Maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe this, this lack of hesitation to get close to her, is a sign that he’s not beyond all hope.

“I could be doing better, too,” she admits. “I’m not going to run, Cassian.”

“And I’m not going to leave you.”

“And maybe we should…both be better at believing that about each other?”

He closes his eyes, smiles against the top of her head, and he feels her grin on the skin of his throat.

“I think you’re right,” he agrees.

“You know what this means, though.”

“It means Chirrut was right.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, he always is. Want to pretend to loathe each other now? Just out of spite?”

She hums thoughtfully, sleepily.

“No, I’m too tired for that,” she admits. Her voice is barely a whisper, and he _loves_ her. So suddenly, so overwhelmingly. He’s crying before he even really realizes it, tears coming unbidden to him, dripping past his eyelashes. He almost lost her. She was almost gone. And yet she’s _here_. She’s still here.

Eventually, he knows he will have to find the words to express just how much she means to him. But it won’t be today. Today it’s just his fingers curling into the back of her neck, his other arm draped over her hip, his body curled around hers like protective armor, like a shield, promising to keep her from as much harm as he possibly can.

She falls asleep soon after that, dropping away, breathing steady and deep. He just stays there, waits there, and lets himself _feel_ , for the first time not trying to resist or repress anything. Just allowing it. Just reveling in it. It’s fucking terrifying, but it would be too late to do anything about it, even if he wanted to.

* * *

Later, Cassian remembers something that he thought was lost to him forever. Some memory haunting the edges of his mind, dredged up unexpectedly. It looks nothing like the sight in front of him. In front of him is Bodhi, perched on the end of Jyn’s infirmary bed, one leg tucked under him, one hand clamped around Jyn’s ankle over the blanket, like he needs to be touching her, like he needs to feel that she’s there. He’s got his own bandages on his leg, and he’s stiff from the bruises, but he has eyes only for her. Has a thousand questions about her injuries.

Chirrut is sitting in the chair beside the bed, laughing delightedly at Bodhi’s good-natured rambling. Jyn’s covering her mouth with her hands, flushing bright red to keep from laughing loudly – they’ve already been told three times to keep it down by the head nurse. Baze is standing on the other side of the bed, arms folded across his chest, looking vaguely critical of the whole situation, but his eyes are gleaming. Cassian remembers seeing his stricken expression when he took in Jyn’s injuries on the shuttle to the clinic. It’s harder for Baze to feign indifference now.

K-2SO is standing at the very end, behind Bodhi, his head swiveling around to whoever happens to be speaking, interjecting often with his own analysis.

Chirrut mentions that K-2SO saved her life, that he took a blaster to the shoulder to save her life, and K-2SO actually _stammers_ as he tries to explain that her survival was paramount to all of their survival, and that he wasn’t worried about her, and that he doesn’t _care_ about her, and Jyn loses her battle in trying to keep from laughing, but the head nurse seems to have given up on them, anyway.

The memory that is both nothing and somehow also _everything_ like this sight in front of him is of a table. Uncles and aunts around it. His father at the head, his mother leaning over the back of the chair to wrap her arms around his father’s shoulders from behind. She’s saying something, but Cassian doesn’t remember what it is. He’s standing in the doorway, having snuck out of bed to watch. They don’t notice him yet. They’re laughing, eating, drinking, sharing the food that there never seems to be enough of, as if there’s plenty to go around. It’s a feast without food enough to feed all of them, but it isn’t _about_ the food, anyway. Cassian is young, maybe five years old, but he understands that much. It’s about being together. It’s about family.

This isn’t a table. This isn’t Fest. This isn’t his mother and father and all the rest of them who share his tan skin, his dark eyes. But the feeling, the contentment lodged inside his chest, it’s the same. It’s warm, suffusing through him, makes him think of the smell of bread and the heat of a fire nearby. He hovers in the door to the infirmary longer than he means to, because he’s so afraid to break the thread that connects his past to this.

“You’re not thinking of doing something stupid like not going in, are you?” Leia asks suddenly from behind him. He unsuccessfully tries to hide that he’s startled, and he looks over his shoulder. Leia’s dressed casually, her hair braided simply, hanging long down the front of her white jacket as she begins to loop it around her head into her more usual crowned style, watching him. She looks young. She looks her age. She belongs in the feeling of the memory, too, and he smiles at her.

“No,” he says. “I was just…savoring it.”

Her smile is proud, like his older sister’s might be, if she could see him now, though Leia is younger than him by enough to make the comparison ridiculous.

“I’m happy for you,” she says. He doesn’t know how to reply. He doesn’t think she wants one. He gestures for her to go in, and she shakes her head. “No, not right now. I was just passing through. Han and I are taking Hinara to…don’t give me that look.”

“What look?”

“That shit-eating grin. You’re going to be insufferable now, aren’t you? Now that you think you’re in a place to give me _advice_ about this.”

“Aren’t I?”

“Ugh, get in there.”

She shoves him, laughing, through the door, and the head nurse is _really_ going to kill them for the delighted cheers that greet him when they notice.

Chirrut makes room, sliding back a bit in his chair, and Jyn scoots over to the side, smile widening as he draws closer.

He sits beside her on the bed, and he feels none of the apprehension that he might have felt once about draping his arm over her shoulder and pulling her closer. She’s tucked neatly under his arm, her head resting against his side, and he has never been quite this comfortable in his life. Warm. Safe. Surrounded by family. He’s been in this fight since he was six years old, but it has taken him this long to find something worth fighting for. More than just an ideal. A hope for a better future for somebody else. For people he never thought he would survive to see. Now he has everything.

Leia is still watching him from the doorway, still smiling at them. He wonders what they look like to her. He wonders if she’s thinking the same thing, if she’s seeing the fruits of war, the impossibly beautiful things that can grow out of lives like theirs. Or is it darker than that? Is she seeing how dangerous it is to form attachments to something that can be so easily lost?

Because it’s true. If just one of them goes, if just one of them falls, Rogue One will never be the same. And it’s war, and Cassian knows better than to think that there’s a good chance they’ll all make it through unscathed. He is all too familiar with the sudden sharp loss of people around him. How quickly they can go, because the universe has no empathy. The universe doesn’t care if you don’t think you can survive without a person. The universe will take whatever it wants to take. But Leia is right. Holding yourself apart might dull the pain when it happens, but it dulls everything. And it’s pointless. They’re all going to die eventually. Maybe he’ll get lucky and go first, or maybe he will lose them. And either they will die knowing how much he loves all of them, or they will die not understanding just how they mean to him. Just how much they have all given him.

When he looks back to the door again, Leia is turning to go. She catches his eye once more, and her head dips in a nod. Respectful, mirthful. He wishes she would come in and join them, take some time for herself. But she isn’t ready to do that yet. It’s on to the next thing. And the next.

Eventually, Cassian will feel that tug, too. So will Jyn. So will the rest of them. They will head back to Kopha to continue the fight, to continue helping. To continue doing everything they can to ensure that they leave the galaxy at least a little better than it was before they got here. But for now, they have each other. They are together and safe, allowed a few moments of peace. As he laughs at something Chirrut says to lighten the mood, Cassian finds that he can’t think of another time in which he has been this happy.

He isn’t the type to say something like that aloud, and neither is Jyn. He thinks they are becoming those people. Easier to speak their thoughts aloud than it used to be. But still, a look can be enough. A smile. She gifts him with both of those things, eyes soft as she gazes up at him, and he thinks of seeing her for the first time on Yavin, small and fierce. Suspicious. Haunted. No less a soldier than he was, despite her lack of official allegiances. And now she’s _here_. They were supposed to die on Scarif, a fleeting connection cut short too soon, but they didn’t. And they’re together. He and Jyn, tightly tied together, but all of them, too. All of them lost, broken in some ways, but together whole.

It won’t last forever, but nothing does. And this is so much more than Cassian ever thought he would have. It’s infinitely more than he ever thought he would deserve. Jyn is warm, pressed against him, and Cassian earnestly believes, and Cassian earnestly hopes, that when it’s over, that when this rosy softness that has become his home inevitably disappears, it will feel like it has been worth the pain of that future loss.

“All right?” Jyn asks. Her voice is quiet, her tone is light. But she looks at him the way she always does, and he can see the understanding there.

“Perfect, actually,” he replies. And maybe that’s not true, maybe that can never be true for them. They don’t live in a galaxy built for perfection, after all. But it’s true enough. It’s closer to perfect than he’s ever been.

* * *

Jyn squeezes Cassian’s hand, and she lets him pull her closer, and she pretends not to notice the way his fingers pull desperately at her shoulder, not quite recovered from nearly losing her.

And she believes him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has been commenting, as always. I've been having a really tough week of Adulting, and being able to turn to this story at the end of the day, knowing that I can rely on your comments to make me laugh and make me feel a little bit better about my writing has been incredibly helpful! I hope you all enjoyed this final mission, and I hope you'll enjoy the finale!


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